It was a very bad week for vulnerabilities relating to graphics and video. Programmers' errors reported by Microsoft, Apple and Macromedia have put millions of systems at risk. Many of those vulnerable systems will not be patched because the vendors have deployed a strategy that makes it the users' responsibility to find and install patches. Many users (children, for example) do not know where to look. It's a brilliant marketing strategy - but will soon be seen as the primary cause of much of the damage created by broad based attacks.
Also Symantec (Veritas) has reported another programming error in its back up products. Our backup and security vendors should be the leaders in delivering safe code (and automatically patch it). We have seen no demonstration of leadership.
For open source fans, the PHP vulnerability we announced on July 1 now has a new worm exploiting it in the wild.
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).
************************** Sponsored Link: ******************************
Is remote access jeopardizing your HIPAA compliancy? Protect PHI, download "Secure Remote Access & HIPAA Compliancy". http://www.sans.org/info.php?id=923
*************************************************************************
Part I is compiled by Rohit Dhamankar 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 Metafile (WMF) and Enhanced Metafile (EMF) are file formats that store images as a sequence of drawing commands and settings. These image formats are processed by the Gdi32.dll library. This library contains multiple integer overflows in handling WMF or EMF files with specially crafted "record" sizes. These overflows can be used to overwrite the heap memory with content from the metafiles resulting in arbitrary code execution. Multiple attack vectors are possible such as including the malicious metafiles in a webpage, shared folder, e-mail, Office documents or Instant Messenger communication. Hence, the flaws should be patched on a priority basis. The technical details required to exploit the flaws have been publicly posted.
Status: Apply the patch referenced in the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-053. The patch also fixes a DoS vulnerability in EMF processing.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are responding to this item. Some sites have already patched their systems. A few sites have Q&A'd the patch and will deploy during their next regularly scheduled system update process. One site is relying on the public Microsoft Update site or will allow their users to obtain the patch through a local update server. One site commented that they expect this might pop up in an email worm.
Description: Apple's QuickTime, a media player installed on millions of systems, contains multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities. (a) QuickTime's "PictureViewer" component is used to display still images in the player. The overflows in the PictureViewer are triggered during the de-compression of "PICT" image, an image format that was developed by Apple for Mac graphics. (b) Buffer overflows in processing "pascal" style strings and movie attributes can be triggered by a specially crafted movie (.mov) file. The discoverer has not posted any further details about the overflows but reported that the flaws could be exploited to execute arbitrary code on Mac as well as Windows systems. Note that a malicious media file may be launched in QuickTime without any user interaction.
Status: Apple has already released patches. Upgrade to version 7.0.3 for both Mac and Windows OS.
Council Site Actions: Most of the council sites are responding to this item. Several sites are in the midst of their update process and a few others plan to deploy during their next regularly scheduled system update process. The final two sites do not officially support this application, but they expect their users will upgrade on their own.
Description: Macromedia Flash Player is used for viewing webpages with enhanced graphics and animation. This player is reportedly installed on 500 million systems including handhelds. The player contains vulnerability in handling SWF files that can be exploited to execute arbitrary code. The problem arises because the media player fails to check bounds for a value used as an array index which then can be used to point to heap memory. eEye researchers report that it is possible to reliably execute code when a malicious SWF file is opened in Internet Explorer using the Macromedia Flash plug-in. A proof-of-concept SWF file has been posted by Sec Consulting.
Status: Vendor confirmed, upgrade to version 8. Microsoft has also published extensive workarounds for this vulnerability.
Council Site Actions: Most of the council sites are responding to this item as well. Several sites are in the analysis phase and have not decided on their final plan. One site had already upgraded to Flash 8. Two sites plan to distribute the patch during their next regularly scheduled system update process. One site does not have a method for site-wide deployment of the update so they recommending their users get the update from the vendor site. The final site does not plan to patch since their Cisco Security Agent install will prevent the buffer overflow from executing code on their desktops.
Description: Veritas NetBackup software offers a backup and recovery solution for mid to large size enterprises. This software contains a stack-based buffer overflow in a shared library that is used by many daemons. The buffer overflow can be exploited by an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code on the backup server or client. A known possible attack vector involves the volume manager daemon (vmd). The technical details about the flaw have not been posted yet.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. Please refer to the Symantec advisory for a list of ports used by Veritas Netbackup daemons. It is advisable to block these ports at the network perimeter.
Council Site Actions: Only three of the reporting council sites are using the affected software. One site plans to deploy the patch during their next maintenance cycle. The second site only has a few affected systems and will rely on the administrators to obtain the updates from the vendor. The final site has already deployed the patch.
Description: ClamAV is an open-source antivirus software designed mainly for scanning emails on UNIX mail gateways. The software includes a virus scanning library - libClamAV. This library is used by many third party email, web, FTP scanners as well as mail clients. The library contains a buffer overflow that can be triggered by specially crafted FSG (Packed Executable Format) files. The attacker can send the malicious file via email, web, FTP or a file share, and exploit the buffer overflow to execute arbitrary code on the system running the ClamAV library. The technical details can be obtained by comparing the fixed and the affected versions of the software. Note that for compromising the mail/web/FTP gateways no user interaction is required.
Status: Version 0.87.1 fixes this overflow. The update also fixes other DoS vulnerabilities. Please look for third party updates for the software linked to libClamAV.
Council Site Actions: The affected software and/or configuration are not in production or widespread use, or are not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: Lupper worm is exploiting remote code execution vulnerabilities in PHP XML-RPC library and AWStats package. Note that PHP XML-RPC library is used by many bulletin boards and content management systems. Hence, users of PHP software using PHP XML-RPC should upgrade to latest version immediately. Another worm is targeting remote file include vulnerabilities in the popular bulletin board, phpBB.
Part II: Weekly Comprehensive List of Newly Discovered Vulnerabilities Week 45, 2005 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 4644 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.
==end==
Subscriptions: @RISK is distributed free of charge to people responsible for managing and securing information systems and networks. You may forward this newsletter to others with such responsibility inside or outside your organization.