An enormous number of critical vulnerabilities were disclosed this week (three times the average week). Microsoft and Cisco products are heavily impacted - meaning nearly every large sight is affected. Try not to ignore the eBay and McAfee and Adobe and Macromedia (Flash) vulnerabilities.
Alan
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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 Rob King and 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: Microsoft Windows is vulnerable to a remotely-exploitable vulnerability in the processing of mailslot messages. Mailslots are a form of intermachine and interprocess communication used on Windows-based operating systems. Mailslots are used by several applications, including the Alerter and Messenger services (enabled by default on Windows 2000). Windows fails to properly validate certain mailslot messages leading to a kernel (core of the operating system) heap overflow. By sending a specially-crafted mailslot request, an attacker could take complete control of the vulnerable system. Additionally, by sending specially-crafted SMB traffic, attackers may be able to view parts of kernel memory, and possibly discover sensitive information. Users are advised to block TCP and UDP ports 137, 139 and 445 at the network perimeter and disable services using mailslot functionality if possible.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are either in the process of deploying the update or will deploy the update during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window.
Description: Microsoft PowerPoint contains a remote code execution vulnerability. This vulnerability is currently being exploited with a limited impact by "Trojan.PPDropper.B". Emails from this worm appear to come from a gmail.com address and have Chinese characters in the subject line and the malicious PowerPoint file. Upon opening the attached PowerPoint file, a keystroke logger (known as "Backdoor.Bifrose.E") is installed on the user's system. Users are advised not to open PowerPoint documents from untrusted sources. Note that it is necessary for the user to open a malicious PowerPoint document; In most common configurations, these files are not opened automatically.
Status: Microsoft Confirmed, no updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the responding council sites are awaiting additional information from the vendor. Should a patch become available, they will deploy the update during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window.
Description: Microsoft's DHCP client service for Windows, used to configure hosts automatically via the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), suffers from a remotely-exploitable buffer overflow. By sending a specially-crafted DHCP packet to a vulnerable system, an attacker could take complete control of the system. Under most network configurations, an attacker must send this packet from the same subnet as the vulnerable system. Users are advised to filter DHCP traffic at the network perimeter and not to forward DHCP broadcast traffic between subnets.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are either in the process of deploying the update or will deploy the update during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window.
Description: Microsoft Office Excel suffers from multiple code execution vulnerabilities. By causing a user to open a specially-crafted Excel file via a malicious link or email message, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, in most configurations other than Office 2000, Excel spreadsheets are not opened automatically after being downloaded; a user must explicitly open them. Users are advised not to open Excel files from untrusted sources. At least eight processing vulnerabilities leading to code execution are known.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available. Note that this patch addresses a previous 0-day issue in Excel; Hence, the patch should be applied on an expedited basis.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are either in the process of deploying the update or will deploy the update during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window.
Description: Various Microsoft Office products are vulnerable to code execution vulnerabilities. When a user opens a specially-crafted Office file via a malicious link or email message, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, under most common configurations other than Office 2000, most Office document types will not open automatically after being downloaded. These vulnerabilities exist within core Office components, and therefore can affect a variety of Office file types such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets etc. Users are advised to not open Office documents from untrusted sources. Technical details and a proof-of-concept for at least one of these vulnerabilities have been publicly posted.
Status: Microsoft Confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are either in the process of deploying the update or will deploy the update during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window.
Description: Various Microsoft Office products are vulnerable to code execution vulnerabilities. When a user opens a specially-crafted Office file via a malicious link or email message, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. These vulnerabilities exist in the code "filters" used to load and convert PNG and GIF image files. Hence, any Office product displaying these image types is potentially vulnerable. Note that, under most common configurations other than Office 2000, Office document types will not open automatically after being downloaded. Users are advised to not open Office documents from untrusted sources.
Status: Microsoft Confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All council sites are either in the process of deploying the update or will deploy the update during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window.
Description: Adobe Acrobat, the most popular PDF viewer on the Internet, is vulnerable to a buffer overflow when processing certain PDF files. When a user views a specially-crafted PDF file via a malicious link or email message, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. In many common configurations, PDF files are opened automatically after downloading. Therefore, no user interaction beyond viewing an email or clicking on a malicious link would be necessary to exploit this vulnerability.
Status: Adobe confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Most of the responding council sites plan to update their systems during their next regular maintenance window. A few sites are still analyzing possible responses.
Description: Macromedia Flash, a popular platform for rich Web content, is vulnerable to multiple undisclosed vulnerabilities. When a user views a specially-crafted SWF (Flash) file via a malicious link, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Flash is installed on all Windows XP and Mac OS X systems by default, and is common on many other platforms. Flash content is configured to display by default, and therefore no user interaction beyond clicking on a link is required to exploit this vulnerability.
Status: Macromedia confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Two of the responding council sites plan to take action on this item. One site is investigating possible actions; the other site plans to distribute the patch during their next regularly scheduled maintenance widow.
Description: Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) servers using Active Server Pages (ASP) contain a code execution vulnerability. By placing a specially-crafted ASP page in a location where it will be processed by an IIS server, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the IIS process (often "IWAM" or "NetworkService"). Attackers must have valid login credentials and the ability to place files on the IIS server. Web site hosting providers typically allow authenticated users to upload web pages. Hence, the providers using IIS should apply this patch on a priority basis.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Two of the responding council sites are using the affected software. Both sites plan to deploy the updates during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window.
Description: Microsoft ASP.NET, Microsoft's web hosting and web services system from the .NET framework, suffers from a remote information-disclosure vulnerability. By sending a specially-crafted request to the ASP.NET web server, an attacker could cause the server to disclose information in the Application folders. By default, an attacker would need to know in advance the name of the object to be displayed. Users are advised to monitor web access logs and move files and other objects out of the Application folders, if possible.
Status: Microsoft Confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Three of the responding council sites are using the affective software. They all plan to deploy the update during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window.
Description: Microsoft Internet Explorer suffers from a heap corruption vulnerability. By instantiating the "RDS.DataControl" ActiveX control, an attacker can cause heap corruption by special manipulation of the "URL" attribute of the object. A denial-of-service condition has been confirmed; it has been suggested that remote code execution may be possible, but this has not been confirmed. Technical details for this exploit and a proof-of-concept have been publicly posted. This ActiveX control is considered obsolete by Microsoft. Users are advised to set the killbit for UUID "bd96c556-65a3-983a-00c04fc29e33". Note that by disabling this control, programs using Microsoft Remote Data Services may stop functioning properly. This flaw was reported by a researcher who plans to release a new flaw every day for the month of July in various browsers. The researcher has also reported other vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Most of these vulnerabilities are DoS flaws.
Status: Microsoft has not confirmed, no updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the responding council sites are awaiting additional information from the vendor. Should a patch become available, they will deploy during their next regularly scheduled maintenance window. References Proof-of-Concept http://metasploit.com/users/hdm/tools/browserfun/mobb_008.html Posting by H. D. Moore http://browserfun.blogspot.com/ 2006/07/mobb-8-rdsdatacontrol-url.html"> http://browserfun.blogspot.com/ 2006/07/mobb-8-rdsdatacontrol-url.html Browserfun Blog by H. D. Moore http://browserfun.blogspot.com/ Microsoft Support Document on Disabling ActiveX Controls ("killbits") http://support.microsoft.com/kb/240797
Status: McAfee confirmed, updates available.
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the responding council sites is using the affected software and they are still considering which action they will take.
Status: eBay confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the responding council sites is using the affected software. They are still in the process of considering what action they will take.
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available.
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.
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available.
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 5078 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
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