This was one of the biggest week's of all of 2005 in terms of the number of new vulnerabilities discovered - over 130.
Two critical vulnerabilities in Mac OS-X were patched by Apple as part of this week's Security Update. Also in the description of the Apple update, we've included a comment from a Mac user about Mac OS X being considered one of the SANS Top 20.
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 Links: ***************************
1) 14-Day Free Trial of QualysGuard - the most accurate On Demand Vulnerability Management Solution. http://www.sans.org/info.php?id=947
2) SANS Webcast: Learn how Banco Santander stays ahead of the threat with IPS solutions from Internet Security Systems. http://www.sans.org/info.php?id=948
3) New eBook: "The Definitive Guide to Information Theft Prevention". Security author Dan Sullivan discusses tactics & technologies to prevent information theft. http://www.sans.org/info.php?id=949
**************************************************************************
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: Apple released a security update for Mac OS X that addresses a number of vulnerabilities. The important issues that are fixed by this update are a buffer overflow in CoreFoundation that can be triggered by a specially crafted URL, and remote code execution flaws in Safari browser. The technical details required to exploit the flaws have not been posted publicly yet.
Status: Apply the update released by Apple on November 29, 2005.
Council Site Actions: A few of the council sites are running the affected software. One site is deploying the update now; several other sites will deploy after they complete the QA process. Note to readers (from Alan). You may have noticed the inclusion of Mac OS X in the SANS Top 20 and the resulting outcries. We thought you might enjoy the following note from someone who apparently believes that Mac security should never be questioned. I've changed some words to
Description: Panda anti-virus products are deployed on a number of desktop systems as well a email gateways. The Panda anti-virus library contains a heap-based overflow that can be triggered by a specially crafted ZOO file (See the references for zoo compression format). The overflow can be exploited to execute arbitrary code. Note that for exploiting the gateway systems no user interaction is required. The technical details required to craft an exploit have been publicly posted.
Status: Panda has not released any updates so far. A workaround is to disable examining .zoo files.
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: The Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) enables applets on websites to run on a client's browser. The Java Security Manager controls the resources a downloaded applet can access ("sandbox" model). Multiple vulnerabilities in the Sun JRE can be exploited by a malicious applet to break out of this "sandbox", and access any local resources. As a result, if a user browses a webpage containing the malicious applet, the applet may be able to execute arbitrary commands on the client system with the privileges of the logged-on user. Note that applets are automatically downloaded and executed in typical browser configurations. The technical details about the flaws have not been publicly posted yet.
Status: Sun confirmed. Upgrade to SDK and JRE 1.3.1_16 , SDK and JRE 1.4.2_09 or JDK and JRE 5.0 Update 4. You can download the software from http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
Council Site Actions: All of the council sites are responding to this item. They all plan to distribute the patch during their next regularly scheduled system update process. One site commented that they will also "lock down" desktops that are running applications requiring older, broken versions of Java.
Council Site Actions: Most council sites have already deployed the patch or will soon do so. One site commented that they have used the exploit code to test some of their systems running the English version of Windows 2000 Professional, but the systems have thus far not responded in a manner that concerned them(i.e., the exploit did not cause a denial of service or provide access to the system).
Council Site Actions: Most of the council sites have already patched their systems or will do so shortly.
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 4701 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.