Although Symantec's Veritas shows up again on the high risk list (#4) with no patch, this week was dominated by Microsoft telling us more ways that their products put us at immediate risk. (#1, #2, #3) Some analysts expect a worm to exploit one of the Microsoft vulnerabilities (#1), but the attackers have moved past worms to use widespread new vulnerabilities in stealth mode to take over hundreds of thousands of systems without announcing their presence the way a worm would. Also if you were an early downloader of one of the Microsoft patches (#2, Special Note), you'll need to do it again because the first one had problems.
Alan
@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 Rohit Dhamankar (rohitd_at_tippingpoint.com) at TippingPoint, a division of 3Com, 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: Windows Plug and Play service is designed to detect new hardware devices connected to a computer. The service is started by default on all Windows 2000/XP/2003 systems, and is reachable remotely via "ntsvcs" named pipe on ports 139/tcp or 445/tcp. This service contains a stack-based buffer overflow that can be triggered by an RPC message invoking function #54, and exploited to execute arbitrary code with "SYSTEM" privileges. Windows 2000 systems are critically affected as any anonymous user can connect remotely to this service and trigger the overflow. Windows XP and 2003 systems require user authentication before the overflow can be leveraged. Multiple exploits have been posted and seen in the wild. The exploit seen in the wild also attempts certain RPC "evasions" to bypass IDS/IPS systems. A worm targeting Windows 2000 systems can be expected soon.
Status: Apply the patch referenced in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-039. A workaround is to block ports 139/tcp and 445/tcp at the network perimeter. Note that last year's Sasser worm exploited a similar vulnerability in the LSASS service.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are responding to all Microsoft items. For this item, most plan to deploy the patch during their next regularly schedule system update process (for some sites that is next week). Several sites are expediting the patch on this item and have already deployed the patch or will do it as soon as they are done with their QA process
Description: Microsoft released another cumulative security update for Internet Explorer that fixes a number of vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a malicious webpage or an HTML email to execute arbitrary code on a client system with the privileges of the logged-on user. The patch fixes the following issues: (a) Internet Explorer contains memory corruption issues in handling specially crafted JPEG images. This issue has been discussed in a previous @RISK newsletter, and a set of images that trigger this vulnerability have been publicly posted. (b) Internet Explorer contains a heap-based overflow when certain DLLs are instantiated as ActiveX controls. The issue is similar to the "Javaprxy.DLL" heap corruption issue that was fixed by MS05-037. This update sets the "kill bit" for 23 similar ActiveX controls associated with the DLLs. Exploit code targeting the "devenum.dll" has been publicly posted. (c) Internet Explorer allows a webpage to display a "folder" view (the view associated with Windows Explorer). This leads to a "cross-domain" vulnerability that can be exploited to execute arbitrary code in the Local zone. The vulnerability arises because IE does not perform sufficient checks for the URLs associated with the folder view. The "folder" view has been targeted in the past by the infamous IE "drag and drop" exploits.
Status: Apply the patch referenced in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-038. Special Note: If the patch was obtained from the Microsoft Download Center within couple hours of the bulletin release, the patch may be corrupted. Please re-download the patch from the Microsoft Download Center.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are responding to all Microsoft items. For this item, most plan to deploy the patch during their next regularly schedule system update process (for some sites that is next week). Several sites are expediting the patch on this item and have already deployed the patch or will do it as soon as they are done with their QA process.
Description: Windows print spooler service (spoolsv.exe) is responsible for tasks related to printing such as scheduling a print job, sending data to printer etc. This service is started by default, and is reachable remotely via "spoolss" named pipe on ports 139/tcp and 445/tcp. This service contains a buffer overflow that can be exploited to execute arbitrary code with "SYSTEM" privileges. Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP1 are critically affected as any anonymous user can remotely connect to this service, and trigger the overflow. Windows XP and 2003 systems require user authentication before the overflow can be leveraged; hence, affected to a lesser degree. No technical details have been posted yet.
Status: Apply the patch referenced in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-043. A workaround is to block the ports 139/tcp and 445/tcp at the network perimeter. Additional ports associated with the printing service that can be blocked from the Internet are listed here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/library/TechRef/d
58ce7b9-49cf-4f5e-95e9-1ade005c13e0.mspx
Council Site Actions: All council sites are responding to all Microsoft items. For this item, most plan to deploy the patch during their next regularly schedule system update process (for some sites that is next week). Several sites are expediting the patch on this item and have already deployed the patch or will do it as soon as they are done with their QA process
Description: Windows Telephony service provides support via the Telephony Application Programming Interface for traditional as well as IP-based phone services. This service, if started, is reachable remotely via "tapisrv" named pipe on port 139/tcp and 445/tcp. The service contains a stack-based buffer overflow that can be triggered by a specially crafted RPC message, and exploited to execute arbitrary code with "SYSTEM" privileges. Exploit is currently available to certain Immunitysec partners and will be released later in the Canvas testing tool.
Status: Apply the patch referenced in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-040. A workaround is to block the ports 139/tcp, 445/tcp and other ports associated with RPC services such as 593/tcp and ports above 1023/tcp at the network perimeter.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are responding to all Microsoft items. For this item, most plan to deploy the patch during their next regularly schedule system update process (for some sites that is next week).
Description: A 0-day vulnerability was reported in the Veritas Backup Exec software for Windows servers. This vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker to download arbitrary files from any Windows server running the backup agent. This can lead to stealing of sensitive data especially for the servers in financial or e-commerce sectors. Exploit code is available in the Metasploit testing tool and has been seen in the wild.
Status: Veritas has not released any patches yet. A workaround is to block the port 10000/tcp at the network perimeter.
Description: Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) helps create a virtual session with a Windows desktop that can be used to access all the data and the applications residing on the desktop. Microsoft's RDP protocol implementation contains a denial-of-service vulnerability that can be triggered by a malformed RDP packet. In addition to Microsoft, eEye researchers have also confirmed that the flaw cannot be exploited to execute arbitrary code. Exploit code has been publicly posted. Note that RDP service is not enabled by default on Windows systems except on XP Media Center edition.
Status: Apply the patch referenced in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-041. Block port 3389/tcp at the network perimeter to prevent any attacks from the Internet. Disable RDP service if not required.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are responding to all Microsoft items. For this item, most plan to deploy the patch during their next regularly schedule system update process (for some sites that is next week).
Description: Three popularly used Perl/PHP software contain vulnerabilities that may be exploited by an attacker to execute arbitrary Perl/PHP code on the web servers running these packages. The posted advisories contain details about how to craft the malicious HTTP requests to leverage these flaws.
Status: AWStats: Vendor confirmed, upgrade to version 6.5 SysCP: Vendor confirmed, upgrade to version 1.2.11 WordPress: No patches available yet.
Description: CA has re-issued the patch for the "CRITICAL" vulnerability in the BrightStor Backup r11.1 Agent for SQL for Windows. The earlier patch did not fix the vulnerability.
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 4467 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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