Windows laptops with wireless cards that use Broadcom device drivers (Broadcom chips are used in machines from HP, Dell, Gateway, and eMachines) are directly vulnerable to the attack that has gotten so much press on Macintosh wireless. You are vulnerable if your wireless card is turned on, even if you are not connected to a wireless access point. Also this week, Firefox users should move to version 1.5.0.8 or version 2 right away, and, separately, updates should be installed for OpenView Configuration Manager V. 1.0.
Alan
PS The annual update to the SANS Top20 will be announced Wednesday morning. Readers of @RISK will be familiar with most of the new patterns, but there are a couple of big ones that may be surprising. It will be posted at http://www.sans.org/top20/ by Wednesday morning.
@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 By SANS WhatWorks In Encryption Summit ************
User-to-user discussions will focus on mistakes to avoid and the things that work to protect data at rest - whether it is on a laptop or a back up tape. That plus a chance to meet the main successful vendors at the SANS Secure Storage & Encryption Summit, December 6-7. There will be ample opportunity to get your questions answered by those who have already fought the war and by the vendors who claim to be able to help. Special sessions on encryption built into drives for laptops and on freeware, too. Special emphasis on VISTA's new built in encryption. http://www.sans.org/info/1789
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TRAINING Update: Full schedule at http://www.sans.org/index.php
This just came in -- we thought you might identify with it, at least a little.
"This work is not just about finding the right firewall rule set, or using Group Policy effectively, or being able to distinguish between MACs and DACs. It's about bringing a level of dedication to your work that gives you, a. the technical expertise to recognize insecure practices; and b. the courage to question entrenched business processes that are putting the organization at risk. Being an information security professional is not the pathway to popularity. If you're doing your job well, you can earn respect, and maybe even gratitude, but there's a good chance you're going to generate resentment and resistance. The willingness to engage your colleagues in ways that often challenges them requires a firm commitment to the values of the profession. And I can honestly say that the SANS instructors I've worked with have fostered and exemplified those values. I don't know how you go about branding that, but it's worth a lot!"
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1) FREE WEBCAST: Best Practices For A Robust Vulnerability Management Lifecycle Program Click here to register: http://www.sans.org/info/1790
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Part I for this issue has been 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 Broadcom BCWML5.SYS device driver, used to control Broadcom wireless cards, contains a buffer overflow vulnerability. By sending an overly-long SSID in a probe response, an attacker could exploit this buffer overflow and take complete control of the vulnerable system. No authentication is required, and attackers need only be within wireless range of the vulnerable system. This driver is primarily designed for Microsoft Windows systems, but it is believed to be compatible with the "NdisWrapper" cross-platform driver framework, making it possible to run this driver under Linux on the Intel platform. This vulnerability was discovered as part of a project to discover bugs in various operating systems' kernels. A working exploit is available for this vulnerability. This vulnerability is similar to one discovered for Mac OS X and documented in an earlier issue of @RISK.
Status: Some vendors have supplied patches for this vulnerability for their wireless cards.
Description: Several products based on the Mozilla suite of applications, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, and the Mozilla SeaMonkey integrated suite, contain multiple vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities could allow a malicious web page or email message to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user, or execute arbitrary JavaScript code. Several denial-of-service cases are also reported. Note that all of the affected applications are open source; technical details can be obtained via source code analysis.
Status: Mozilla Foundation confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only two of the reporting council sites are responding to this item. One site is already distributing the updates. The other site plans to update their IT maintained systems later this month. Most of their non-IT-supported users have the product configured to automatically check and install updates.
Description: HP OpenView Client Configuration Manager, used to centrally manage client configuration, contains a remote command execution vulnerability. Due to a logic error in the programming, correct authentication is not required to execute files inside the "radexecd.exe" install directory. Additionally, due to the available programs in this directory, it is possible to create additional, arbitrary executables. No authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability.
Status: HP 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.
Description: ProFTPD, a popular multiplatform open source FTP server, contains an unspecified vulnerability. Attackers could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the server process. The exact nature of this vulnerability is currently unknown, though it is believed to involve the "CommandBufferSize" configuration directive. Although technical details for this vulnerability have not been publicly posted, because ProFTPD is open source, technical details can be obtained via source code analysis.
Council Site Actions: Have seen conflicting severity ratings for this (Moderate Critical), still reviewing
Description: Citrix MetaFrame contains multiple vulnerabilities: (1) By sending a specially-crafted authentication messages to the server, an attacker could trigger a heap overflow. This overflow can be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the server process. (2) Specially-crafted messages sent to the server can cause the server to crash, leading to a denial-of-service condition.
Status: Citrix confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the reporting council sites is responding to this item. Their desktop support team is currently investigating the impact at their organization.
Description: OpenSSH, an open source implementation of the SSH protocol, contains a weakness in its authentication mechanisms. It may be possible to authenticate to an OpenSSH process with an invalid key signature. It is currently believed that this vulnerability is not exploitable without the presence of other vulnerabilities. OpenSSH is open source software; technical details for this vulnerability may be obtained via source code analysis.
Status: OpenSSH confirmed, updates available.
Description: Xlink Technologies Omni-NFS server, a popular NFS (Network Filesystem) server for Microsoft Windows, contains a remotely-exploitable buffer overflow. By sending specially-crafted NFS requests to the server, an attacker could exploit this buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the server process. Technical details and an exploit for this vulnerability are publicly available.
Status: Xlink 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.
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 5247 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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