Two Microsoft zero day vulnerabilities top this week's list - one in Internet Explorer and one in PowerPoint. But Apple's OS X and OpenSSL are also in need of immediate patching. And at the end we have a bonus section from SPI Dynamics on how search engine queries can be and are being stolen.
Plus a bonus today for SANS alumni: Rohit Dhamankar painstakingly compiled a table of all 2006 Microsoft security bulletins and showed which ones already have been exploited in the wild and which ones had zero day exploits and reference urls for the exploits. He did it to help you prioritize your patching and we plan to keep it updated on the alumni section of the SANS website. It's not there yet, so right now if you want it email info@sans.org with the subject Windows Exploits. That site will verify your alumni status so make sure you use the email address you used when you registered for SANS training. We're not withholding it from others, but rather are working with the US CERT and Canadian CERT so they can add value and make available to everyone.
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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Three Big SANS Training Conferences Coming Up in the Next Three Months
Amsterdam, New Orleans, Washington, DC
See http://www.sans.org/index.php
New Orleans: November 14-26 http://www.sans.org/neworleans06/
Amsterdam: November 6-11 http://www.sans.org/amsterdam06/
Washington DC: December 9-16 http://www.sans.org/cdieast06/
How Good Are SANS Courses?
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Programs are scheduled in more than 40 cities in the next few months or you can attend live classes (or on demand courses) without leaving your home. Schedule: http://www.sans.org//index.php
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2) Free SANS WhatWorks in Patch and Configuration Management Webcast this Thursday "Securing Systems and Saving Money with Multifunction Management Tools" Thursday, October 05 at 1:00 PM EDT (1700 UTC/GMT) http://www.sans.org/info/1382
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Part III - Stealing Search Engine Queries from Javascript by SPI Dynamics, Inc.
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: The 0-day vulnerability in WebViewFolderIcon ActiveX Control discussed in a previous issue of the @RISK newsletter is now getting exploited in the wild. Security researchers last week publicly posted exploit code that can be used to compromise a Windows system when an IE user browses a malicious webpage.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, no updates yet available. A workaround is to set the kill bits for the following UUIDs: "844F4806-E8A8-11d2-9652-00C04FC30871" and "E5DF9D10-3B52-11D1-83E8-00A0C90DC849".
Description: Microsoft PowerPoint is vulnerable to a remotely-exploitable code execution vulnerability. A specially-crafted PowerPoint file, when opened, can execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. No technical details for this vulnerability have been publicly posted but a Trojan has been seen in the wild. The Trojan is currently identified as "Trojan.PPDropper.F" by some antivirus software. It is believed that this issue is related to the issue disclosed in a previous @RISK entry (see the references below). The currently-known variant has been seen to connect to the host "mylostlove1.6600.org", though other variants may connect elsewhere. Users are advised to monitor network access logs to see if this host is being actively contacted.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, no updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the responding council sites are waiting on a patch from the vendor. They will deploy during their next regularly schedule system update cycle.
Description: Apple Mac OS X contains multiple remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities: (1) Failure to properly validate externally-provided data at the network frame level could trigger various flaws in the AirPort wireless networking subsystem. These flaws may be exploited by remote attackers within wireless range to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. It is believed that these flaws can be exploited even if the vulnerable machine is not on the same logical IP network as the attacker. This issue may be related to one discussed in a previous @RISK entry (see below). (2) Failure to properly validate anonymous SSL connections could allow malicious sites to pose as trusted sites to any application using the CFNetwork suite (including many common applications such as Safari). (3) A specially-crafted JPEG2000 or PICT image may lead to a buffer overflow and allow attackers to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. (4) A specially-crafted web page may case a buffer overflow in the WebCore rendering framework (used by Safari and other HTML-viewing applications), leading to remote code execution with the privileges of the current user.
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Description: OpenSSL, an open source implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer, contains a remotely-exploitable buffer overflow in its handling of ASN.1-encoded data. OpenSSL is used in a wide variety of applications; including many applications designed for security, and is installed by default on most UNIX, Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X systems. By sending a specially-crafted request to a vulnerable application using OpenSSL, an attacker could trigger this buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable application. Note that, because OpenSSL is open source, technical details for this vulnerability may be easily obtained via source code analysis.
Status: OpenSSL confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Two of the responding council sites are using the affected software and are in the process of investigating how this vulnerability affects them.
Description: GNU gzip, the GNU project's popular compression tool, contains multiple remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities. A specially crafted gzip-compressed file could trigger these vulnerabilities and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. The gzip program is installed on all Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X systems, and is common on most UNIX systems. On these systems, it is generally the preferred compression method. Note that, because gzip is open source, technical details for this vulnerability may be easily obtained via source code analysis.
Status: Some vendors, notably FreeBSD, have released patches for the versions of gzip included in their operating system distributions.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the responding council sites is using the affected software. Their Red Hat Linux systems will be updated via the Up2Date cycle. They are still investigating whether the vulnerability affects them on other O/S platforms.
Description: An unconfirmed remote code execution vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox has been reported. A specially-crafted web page containing JavaScript could result in arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user. No technical details for this vulnerability have been publicly posted.
Status: Mozilla has not confirmed, no updates available.
Description: HP Ignite-UX, used to manage multiple HP-UX installations, contains a remotely-exploitable authentication-bypass and privilege escalation vulnerability. By sending specially-crafted commands to a vulnerable system, an attacker can log in with administrative privileges and gain complete control of the system. Note that no technical details for this vulnerability have been publicly posted.
Status: HP confirmed, updates available.
Description: OpenSSH, a popular implementation of the Secure Shell protocol, contains a remotely-exploitable race condition. OpenSSH servers configured to use GSSAPI (General Security Services Application Programming Interface) services are vulnerable to this race condition. By sending specially-crafted traffic to a vulnerable system, an attacker could theoretically execute arbitrary code with root privileges (Portable OpenSSH) or cause a denial-of-service condition (OpenSSH). Note that this vulnerability is currently believed to be only theoretical; it is not believed to be practically exploitable under normal conditions.
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 5191 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
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Errata: In @RISK volume 5, issue 38, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird version 1.5.0.7 and Mozilla SeaMonkey version 1.0.5 were described as containing multiple vulnerabilities. These versions are not vulnerable. The vulnerable versions are 1.5.0.6 and prior for Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, and versions 1.0.4 and prior for Mozilla SeaMonkey.
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Part III Stealing Search Engine Queries from JavaScript by SPI Dynamics, Inc.
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Stealing Search Engine Queries from JavaScript
SPI Labs has discovered a practical method of using JavaScript to detect the search queries a user has entered into arbitrary search engines. As seen with the recent leakage of 36 million search queries made by half-a-million America Online subscribers, there are enormous privacy concerns when a user's search queries are made public. All the code needed to steal a user's search queries is written in JavaScript and uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This code could be embedded into any website either by the website owner or by a malicious third party through a Cross-site Scripting (XSS) attack. There it would harvest information about every visitor to that site. For example, an HMO's website could determine whether a visitor has been searching other sites about cancer, cancer treatments, or drug rehab centers. Government websites could determine whether a visitor has been searching for bomb-making instructions.
The methodology to steal search engine queries from JavaScript is based upon techniques that were presented at Black Hat USA 2006, and that used JavaScript and CSS to determine if a user had visited an arbitrary link [1]. CSS is used to define styles for visited and unvisited hyperlinks. JavaScript is used to dynamically create hyperlinks hidden from the user's view. The browser applies the appropriate visited or unvisited style and JavaScript is then used to read the style and detect if the user has visited the hyperlink. Essentially, JavaScript can now be used to determine whether a user has visited a specific URL.
To steal search engine queries, JavaScript simply checks to see if a user has visited a URL that returns the results page for a given search query. If a user has visited the results page, then the user has searched for that query. Comparing the search results page for each search query reveals that the URLs are very similar. It is trivial for JavaScript to substitute different search queries to determine which ones the user visited.
Stealing queries is not as simple as plugging a search query into a URL and checking it. There are several factors such as letter case, query word order, and search engine used that can generate hundreds if not thousands of permutations that must be checked. More information about these barriers and how they can be overcome is discussed in great detail in the full whitepaper [2]. In short, JavaScript code is used to generate all these combinations in the client's browser. For a 4-word search query, over 1000 URLs can be generated and checked in just a few seconds, making this a viable attack vector against modern desktops.
To protect yourself from this threat, end users should routinely clear their browser's history. Developers can reduce the risk of exposing the privacy of their users by securing the site against XSS. More information is available in the full whitepaper.
SPI Labs has created SearchTheft as a proof of concept for the techniques described above. It is written in JavaScript and has been tested against both Mozilla/Firefox and Internet Explorer. SearchTheft automatically generates all letter casing and word order permutations of a given search query and checks if the user has searched for some variation of that query on a wide variety of search engines. A demonstration of using SearchTheft, as well as the source code, is available to the public [3].
References
[1] http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-06/BH-US-06-Grossman.pdf
[2] http://www.spidynamics.com/assets/documents/JS_SearchQueryTheft.pdf
[3] http://www.spidynamics.com/spilabs/js-search/index.html
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(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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