A big week for critical vulnerabilities: Major vulnerabilities discovered in multimedia software from Apple and Adobe, as well as multiple Microsoft software including Internet Explorer.
Good news - for a change. For everyone who has ever tried to reduce vulnerabilities, and found it very hard, today is a very good day. NIST just announced (this morning) that it is launching a cooperative effort involving NSA, DoD/DISA, DHS, and the Center for Internet Security, with the help of security and software vendors, to radically upgrade vulnerability management. The program will bring automation and standardization to vulnerability management, and it is real. Within a few months, you should expect to see new procurement language that can be used by any organization buying software or system or system integration, that will require the vendors and contractors to deliver systems and software compatible with the new automated vulnerability management program. SANS will do a free webcast on it shortly to give you more details.
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).
**** SANS Security Summits on SCADA Security and on Laptop Encryption ***
(1) The Process Control & SCADA Security Summit, September 28 - 30, in Las Vegas, focuses on the most critical vulnerabilities in control systems that run power plants, chemical plants, transportation systems, pipelines, and more, and shows what can be done now secure these critical systems. http://www.sans.org/info.php?id=1349
(2) The Secure Storage and Encryption Summit, December 6 - 7 near Washington, DC, offers the only user-to-user program on what works in securing laptops and PDAs and other places where data is at rest. Lessons learned, surprises, problems; just what you need to reduce the pain in deploying encryption and other storage security technology. Very limited seating for this one, so if you are going to be investing your time in improving mobile data security, server security, or even database security, please register very soon. http://www.sans.org/info.php?id=1350
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SANS is coming back to New Orleans Nov. 14-21. To make it a memorable program, the four highest rated SANS teachers will teach classes of limited size to maximize interaction. You won't find better security training anywhere. How Good Are SANS Courses? Ask the alumni.
++ "I have attended courses by several of SANS rivals, and SANS blew them away." - Alton Thompson, US Marines
++ "This is the only conference/training I've ever attended at which I learned techniques and found tools I could apply immediately." - Dwight Leo, Defense Logistics Agency, DLA
++ "This program provided the opportunity to learn from many of the people who are defining the future direction of information technology" - - Larry Anderson, Computer Sciences Corp.
++ "The SANS classes have been uniformly excellent. To learn as much through traditional classes would have entailed weeks away from work." - - David Ritch, Department of Defense
See: http://www.sans.org/ns2006/caag.php
************************* Sponsored Links: ******************************
"Trustworthy IPS Testing and Certification" Free SANS Special Webcast tomorrow, Tuesday, September 19 at 1:00 PM EDT (1700 UTC/GMT) http://www.sans.org/info.php?id=1351
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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: Apple's QuickTime media player and framework contains multiple file-parsing vulnerabilities. Failure to properly parse H.264 movie files, QuickTime movie files, FLC movie files, FlashPix images, and SGI images, leads to various remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities. A specially-crafted movie or image file could exploit one of these vulnerabilities and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that in most common configurations, files handled by QuickTime are opened automatically. Technical details for some of these vulnerabilities, and a simple proof-of-concept for the FLC vulnerability, have been publicly posted.
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Multiple reporting council plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled maintenance cycle. One other site plans to notify their Windows users to obtain the update on their own and the Mac OS users will be automatically updates using Apple's Software Update Facility.
Description: Adobe's Flash Player (formerly Macromedia Flash Player), a widely-deployed system for rich web content, contains several remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities, including remote code execution and denial-of-service vulnerabilities: (1) Failure to properly handle heap memory when dynamically allocating long strings at runtime leads to a controllable memory-overwrite condition. Some technical details for this vulnerability have been publicly posted. (2) An unspecified file parsing vulnerability can lead to multiple improper memory access errors. (3) Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that embed the Adobe Flash Player ActiveX object can, with user assistance, execute arbitrary JavaScript code. (4) An unspecified vulnerability allows specially-crafted Flash file to bypass the internal sandbox protection mechanism, allowing privilege escalation. (5) An unspecified file parsing vulnerability can lead to a denial-of-service condition by crashing the viewing web browser. A specially-crafted Flash file could trigger these vulnerabilities and potentially execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, in the default configuration, Flash files are displayed automatically when loaded in a web browser.
Status: Adobe confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All responding council sites plan to take action - - most will be deploying the patches during their next regular maintenance release cycle. One site will rely on individual end users to obtain the update.
Description: Microsoft has released a third version for the Internet Explorer patch MS06-042. The second version of the patch fixed a vulnerability introduced by the original version of the patch. However, the second version also introduced another related vulnerability. Internet Explorer fails to properly handle overlong URLs in certain situations involving HTTP redirects and GZIP or deflate data encoding. Note that only systems with the initial version of the MS06-042 patch are vulnerable, and Windows XP with SP2 is never vulnerable. Technical details for this vulnerability have been publicly posted.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All responding council site plan to take action - most will be deploying the patches during their next regular maintenance release cycle.
Description: The Microsoft Message Queueing component (not installed by default) in Microsoft Windows XP contains a remotely-exploitable buffer overflow vulnerability. Failure to properly handle Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) packets leads to a buffer overflow. A series of specially-crafted PGM packets could trigger this buffer overflow and allow arbitrary code execution with SYSTEM-level privileges. Users are advised to block packets with IP protocol number 113 at the network perimeter, if possible.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All responding council site plan to take action - most will be deploying the patches during their next regular maintenance release cycle.
Description: Microsoft Office Publisher, a popular Desktop Publishing (DTP) application and Microsoft Office component, contains a remotely-exploitable file-format vulnerability. Failure to properly validate Publisher files (typically identified via the ".pub" filename extension) leads to a buffer overflow. A specially-crafted Publisher file could exploit this overflow and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that Publisher files do not open by default in versions of Microsoft Office after Office 2000.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Most responding council site plan to take action and will be deploying the patches during their next regular maintenance release cycle.
Description: The VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) is a proprietary Cisco protocol used to distribute VLAN configuration information. The implementation of VTP on switches running Cisco IOS and CatOS operating systems contains several vulnerabilities: (1) VLAN names longer than 100 bytes can result in a buffer overflow in Cisco IOS. A specially-crafted VTP request could trigger this buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code on the switch. (2) A specially-crafted VTP request could lead to a denial-of-service condition on Cisco IOS-based devices. (3) Specifying a large configuration revision number can result in an integer overflow in both Cisco IOS and CatOS-based devices. Once this integer overflow has been triggered, any VTP updates sent out by the affected switch will be ignored by other switches. Users are advised to implement VTP password authentication for all VTP domains, if possible.
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Three of the responding council sites are using the affected software. One site will deploy the patch during their next maintenance cycle, another site will deploy the patch later this year unless if a DoS is observed, and the third site is still investigating.
Description: HP OpenView, a popular enterprise-level system monitoring and management suite, contains multiple unspecified remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities include remote unauthorized access, possibly allowing for remote command execution, and denial-of-service conditions.
Status: HP confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one council site is using the affected software and they plan to push the patch during their next regularly scheduled maintenance cycle.
Description: Some PHP scripts fail to properly account for NULL (ASCII 0) characters in certain user-supplied data. A specially-crafted request could exploit this vulnerability and overwrite arbitrary files with user-supplied data. A proof-of-concept exploit for phpBB has been publicly posted.
Description: The Microsoft Indexing Service, used to index data to allow for rapid searches, contains a remotely-exploitable cross-site-scripting vulnerability. Failure to properly sanitize user-supplied input would allow a specially-crafted web page to execute arbitrary JavaScript code with the privileges of the current user, subject to that user's JavaScript security settings.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Most responding council site plan to take action and will be deploying the patches during their next regular maintenance release cycle.
Description: The following popular software packages reportedly contain PHP remote file include vulnerabilities: phpBB XS, HotPlug CMS, ppalCart, and phpLinkExchange. These flaws can be exploited by a remote attacker to run arbitrary PHP code on the web server hosting the vulnerable software packages. The postings show how to craft the malicious HTTP requests to exploit the flaws. Note that all of these vulnerabilities require that the PHP "register_globals" options be enabled. The "register_globals" option is disabled by default in PHP version 4.2.0 and later. Users are advised to disable the "register_globals" option if possible, and run web server software under a low-privilege account. Status: phpBB has not confirmed, no updates available. HotPlug CMS has not confirmed, no updates available. ppcalCart has not confirmed, no updates available. phpLinkExchange has not confirmed, no 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.
Description: The following popular software packages reportedly contain remote SQL injection vulnerabilities: NX5Linkx, CloudNine Interactive Links Manager, TikiWiki, PHPFusion, and Jetbox CMS.. These flaws can be exploited by a remote attacker to run arbitrary SQL statements on the database used by the vulnerable software packages. The postings show how to craft the malicious HTTP requests to exploit the flaws. Status: NX5 has not confirmed, no updates available. CloudNine has not confirmed, no updates available. TikiWiki has not confirmed, no updates available. PHPFusion has confirmed, updates available. Jetbox has not confirmed, no 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.
Description: Tagger LE, used to provide user comment and chat functionality on web pages, contains a remotely-exploitable command execution vulnerability. By sending a specially-crafted request, an attacker could execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the web server process. Technical details and a simple proof-of-concept for this vulnerability have been publicly posted.
Status: Tagger has not confirmed, no 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.
Description: The NetPerformer FRAD (Frame Relay Access Device) contains multiple remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities: (1) Passing a username longer than 4550 bytes to the telnet service triggers a buffer overflow. It is currently unknown whether this can lead to remote code execution; currently only the denial-of-service case it known. (2) By sending a specially-crafted ICMP packet to the device, an attacker can cause the device to stop processing TCP traffic. Technical details for these vulnerabilities, as well as a simple proof-of-concept, have been publicly posted.
Status: NetPerformer has not confirmed, no 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.
Description: SQL-Ledger, a popular web-based accounting system, and LedgerSMB, a derivative, contain a remote code execution vulnerability. By sending a specially-crafted request to the vulnerable server, an attacker could trigger this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the server process. Technical details for this vulnerability have been publicly posted.
Status: SQL-Ledger has confirmed, updates available. LedgerSMB has not confirmed, no 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.
Description: An exploit for the Microsoft Internet Explorer "DirectAnimation" vulnerability discussed in a previous @RISK Newsletter Entry has been publicly posted. This exploit allows for arbitrary remote-code execution with the privileges of the current user.
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 5166 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely. 06.37.1 CVE: CVE-2006-3442 Platform: Windows Title: Microsoft PGM Remote Buffer Overflow Description: Microsoft Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) is a multicast protocol to detect, report on, and request retransmission of incomplete or lost inbound data. It is prone to a remote buffer overflow vulnerability that surfaces when a specially crafted multicast message is received by the vulnerable system. This issue only affects systems when Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) 3.0 is installed; this is not the default. Ref: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS06-052.mspx
(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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