This issue was delayed because we were waiting for the Microsoft patch for the wmf vulnerability. It is now available directly from Microsoft.
A research project opportunity to give back to the community: for DoD and other government employees and consultants who know about C&A and DITSCAP. If you have knowledge of either good or bad practices, please email info@sans.org with subject C&A.
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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2) Internet Storm Center: "Threat Update" webcast Wednesday, January 11 at 1:00 PM EST (1800 UTC/GMT) http://www.sans.org/info.php?id=976
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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: Updated exploit code has been publicly posted that initially bypassed many AV software as well as IDS/IPS systems. The new exploit code pads the malicious WMF file with certain benign metafile function records. It is possible to create further variants by changing the function numbers used in the padding. Reports indicate that the malicious WMF files (that can be camouflaged with benign extensions like jpg or gif) are being sent via links in IM chat. NIST has reported that Lotus Notes uses the vulnerable Windows DLL to open WMF images and hence is affected by the flaw as well. An unofficial patch has been published by Ilfak Guilfanov (creator of IDAPro). The patch has been verified by SANS Incident Handlers and works as intended. Due to a large number of attack vectors for this vulnerability i.e. the malicious WMF file can be downloaded via HTTP, file sharing, IM, e-mail, it is recommended to apply the unofficial patch to protect the client systems. In the meanwhile, Microsoft is getting ready to release the patch next Tuesday (Jan 10, 2006) along with other security updates.
Council Site Actions: All reporting council sites are responding to this issue. Most are keeping their AV signatures up to date and are waiting for the official MS patch. Most sites will deploy the MS patch on an expedited basis when it arrives and after they have completed QA. Some sites have also updated their IDS/IPS signatures and are also black-holing URLS with malicious content as they become known and removing all WMF attachments. Several sites have tested unregistering the DLL but this broke several of their applications. Several sites are also considering deploying the unofficial patch if the risk increases.
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 4750 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
(c) 2006. 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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