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@RISK is the SANS community's consensus bulletin summarizing the most important vulnerabilities and exploits identified during the past week and providing guidance on appropriate actions to protect your systems (PART I). It also includes a comprehensive list of all new vulnerabilities discovered in the past week (PART II).
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Part I is compiled by the security team at TippingPoint (www.tippingpoint.com) as a by-product of that company's continuous effort to ensure that its intrusion prevention products effectively block exploits using known vulnerabilities. TippingPoint's analysis is complemented by input from a council of security managers from twelve large organizations who confidentially share with SANS the specific actions they have taken to protect their systems. A detailed description of the process may be found at http://www.sans.org/newsletters/cva/#process
Description: Microsoft has released a patch for the cross-domain vulnerability in the HTML Help ActiveX control that was publicly disclosed in December 2004. The vulnerability can be leveraged to completely compromise a Windows client. An attacker can exploit the flaw by constructing a malicious webpage or an HTML email. Browsing the webpage or opening the email is sufficient for the client compromise i.e. no further user interaction is required. Several exploits are publicly available. Trojan Phel.A, which leverages this flaw, is also circulating in the wild.
Status: Apply the patch contained in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-001.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to this issue. Some sites are already in the process of testing and planning for patching, or are doing the actual patching. A few sites have already patched their critical systems. Other sites will deploy the patch during their next regularly scheduled system update process within the next few weeks. A few sites commented that their current defense in depth technologies such as email scanning, AV protection and firewall ACL's help mitigate malware threats.
Description: Microsoft has released a patch for the buffer overflow vulnerabilities in the USER32 library's "LoadImage" function. This patch fixes a buffer overflow disclosed publicly in December 2004, and another buffer overflow discovered by the eEye researchers. The flaws may be exploited to execute arbitrary code on a Windows system. To exploit the flaw, an attacker can take any of the following actions: (a) Create a webpage containing a malicious icon, cursor or an animated cursor file and entice an attacker to visit his webpage. (b) Send an HTML email containing the malicious icon, cursor or an animated cursor file. (c) Create a shared folder containing the malicious icon, cursor or an animated cursor file, and entice a user to browse his shared folder. The technical details and exploit code are publicly available.
Status: Apply the patch contained in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-002. An alternative for XP systems is to upgrade to SP2. Note that the discoverer's posting states that the handling of bitmap files is also affected. However, Microsoft's advisory does not mention about bitmap as an affected file type.
Council Site Actions: The council site response for this item is the same as Item 1 above.
Description: Apple's iTunes is a popularly used media player on both Windows and Mac OS systems. The player contains a buffer overflow in handling playlist files i.e. files with a ".m3u" or ".pls" extension. Specifically, an overlong URL (over 3045 bytes) in a malicious playlist file triggers the buffer overflow. A malicious webpage can exploit the flaw to execute arbitrary code on a client system. Note that if iTunes is the default player no user interaction is required to leverage the flaw.
Status: Apple confirmed, upgrade to version 4.7.1.
Council Site Actions: We were unable to solicit the council site input for this item.
Description: Multiple vendor implementation of LDAP protocol contains a buffer overflow. An unauthenticated attacker can exploit the flaw to possibly execute arbitrary code on the vulnerable Directory servers with the privileges of the LDAP service. No technical details regarding the nature of the LDAP query, which can trigger the overflow, have been posted yet.
Status: HP and RedHat have confirmed the flaw and released updates. A confirmation is awaited from many other vendors.
Council Site Actions: We were unable to solicit the council site input for this item.
Description: Windows Indexing Service is a base service for Windows 2000 or later that extracts content from files, and constructs an indexed catalog to facilitate efficient and rapid searching. The Indexing service is accessible to anonymous users via HTTP only if the IIS server is specially configured (not a default configuration). Under such a configuration, an anonymous user may trigger a buffer overflow in the Indexing service via a crafted query. The flaw may be exploited to execute arbitrary code with "SYSTEM" privileges. Limited technical details about the flaw are publicly available. Note that the Indexing service can be accessed via SMB. However, the service is accessible over SMB only to authenticated users there by reducing the risk of attacks via this attack vector.
Status: Apply the patch contained in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-003.
Council Site Actions: Most of the reporting council sites do not run indexing or if they do it is on a very limited basis. Those who are using indexing plan to install the patch during their next regularly scheduled update process.
Description: Symantec Norton antivirus is a very widely used product for protecting Windows systems. The product reportedly contains a denial-of-service vulnerability. The flaw exists in the product's "ccErrDsp.dll". This DLL registers a COM object which contains an overflow that can be triggered by a large parameter. A malicious website may exploit this flaw to kill the antivirus process on a client, and then install malware by exploiting any of the unpatched IE vulnerabilities. A proof-of-concept exploit is included in the discoverer's posting.
Status: Symantec is validating the flaw and will release patches, if necessary.
Council Site Actions: Only a few council sites are using the affected software. They are waiting on confirmation and a patch from the vendor.
Description: poppassd_pam server allows users to change their system passwords thereby allowing the users to change their POP passwords. The server contains a flaw that allows any user to change another user's password, including root user's password. Hence, the flaw can be exploited to possibly obtain root access on the server running poppassd_pam. The problem arises because the server does not validate any user's current password prior to changing it.
Status: Vendor confirmed, fixes available.
Council Site Actions: We were unable to solicit the council site input for this item.
Description: The following software packages reportedly contain PHP remote file include vulnerabilities: SugarCRM and VHCS. These flaws can be exploited by a remote attacker to run arbitrary PHP code on the webserver hosting the vulnerable software packages. The postings show how to craft the malicious HTTP requests to exploit the flaws. Note that the vulnerabilities can be exploited only if the server's "register_globals" PHP configuration parameter is turned "On". The default setting for this parameter is "Off" for PHP versions 4.2.0 or higher. Status: SugarCRM - Fix information included in the discoverer's posting. VHCS - Unknown. A workaround is to turn the "register_globals" off.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or widespread use, or is not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: Description: Exim is a mail transfer agent (MTA) for Unix systems similar to sendmail. The MTA contains a buffer overflow vulnerability if configured for NTLM authentication. The overflow can be triggered by an overlong base64 encoded string. The flaw may be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the Exim process, possibly root.
Status: Upgrade to version 4.43 for which a patch is available.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or widespread use, or is not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: The following web-based software packages reportedly contain SQL injection vulnerabilities: Invision Community Blog, b2evolution and MyBulletinBoard. These flaws can be exploited to manipulate SQL queries issued against the backend databases, potentially leading to compromise of the affected application. The technical details required for exploitation have been posted.
Status: For all the affected software, updates are available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the council sites responded to this item. They have notified their system administrators and are leaving the action decision up to them.
Description: Multiple exploits have been posted for the "CRITICAL" buffer overflow in the Veritas Backup Exec Agent discussed in a previous issue of the @RISK newsletter. Note that in some configurations the Backup Exec Agent runs with domain administrator privileges, which may result in a domain compromise. Veritas has issued patches which should be applied on a priority basis. The SANS Incident Handlers report that scans have been increasing for port 6101, typically associated with the Backup Agent.
Council Site Actions: No new actions based on exploit. The few sites using this software have already patched the affected systems.
Description: Description: Winser-a Trojan is exploiting the Microsoft WINS Server buffer overflow vulnerabilities discussed in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-045. Note that multiple exploits have also been publicly posted.
Council Site Actions: No new actions based on the exploit. The council sites using the affected software have already deployed the patch and they are blocking WINS at their perimeter security control points.
This list is compiled by Qualys ( www.qualys.com ) as part of that company's ongoing effort to ensure its vulnerability management web service tests for all known vulnerabilities that can be scanned. As of this week Qualys scans for 4008 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
(c) 2005. All rights reserved. The information contained in this newsletter, including any external links, is provided "AS IS," with no express or implied warranty, for informational purposes only. In some cases, copyright for material in this newsletter may be held by a party other than Qualys (as indicated herein) and permission to use such material must be requested from the copyright owner.
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