Windows zero-day vulnerabilities and Adobe file handling problems headline this week's most critical vulnerabilities (#1-#3), but users of CA storage software should also consider the advice under #7.
@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 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: Two zero-day vulnerabilities have been discovered in Microsoft Word. A specially-crafted Word document file could exploit these vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Word documents will not open without prompting on all versions of Word after Word 2000. At least two trojans are known to be exploiting one of these vulnerabilities in the wild; the other vulnerability is being exploited on a more limited basis.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, no updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the responding council sites are waiting for confirmation and a patch from Microsoft. They plan to deploy the patch during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window, or automatically through Microsoft's Automatic Update Feature.
Description: A previously-known vulnerability that was originally considered to lead only to a denial-of-service condition is now believed to be exploitable. Microsoft Windows Media Player fails to properly handle malformed "REF HREF" elements (used to link to other files) in ASX playlist files. It is believed that a specially-crafted ASX file could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. ASX files are opened without prompting by default. A simple proof-of-concept and technical details are publicly available.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, no update available.
Council Site Actions: All of the responding council sites are waiting for confirmation and a patch from Microsoft. They plan to deploy during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window, or automatically through Microsoft's Automatic Update Feature.
Description: Adobe Download Manager, used to download updates for Adobe software, contains a buffer overflow vulnerability that can be triggered by a specially-crafted AOM file. AOM files are used to specify information about updates. By default, AOM files are opened without prompting, including when downloaded from websites. A malicious AOM file could take advantage of this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. The Adobe Download Manager is installed by default with several Adobe products, including Acrobat Reader.
Status: Adobe confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Most of the responding council sites plan to address this issue in their next regularly scheduled maintenance window. Some sites rely on Adobe's Automatic update feature, thus if this application is available via that Automatic Update, it will get updated. Otherwise those sites will need to develop a strategy to distribute this application.
Description: IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, used to manage storage space across an enterprise, contains multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities. By sending a specially-crafted request to the Storage Manager Service, an attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the server process. Users are advised to block TCP port 1500 at the network perimeter if possible.
Status: IBM confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Two of the responding council sites plan to address this issue. Both will deploy during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. One site is already blocking port 1500 at their network perimeters.
Description: Barracuda Networks Barracuda Spam Firewall ships with a version of the Convert-UUlib Perl module known to be vulnerable to a buffer overflow. A specially-crafted email message could exploit this vulnerability to take complete control of the vulnerable device. Technical details and a proof-of-concept for this vulnerability are publicly available.
Status: Barracuda Networks 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: Citrix Presentation Server Client for Windows contains an ActiveX control which contains a heap overflow vulnerability in its "SendChannelData" method. A page that instantiates this control could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.
Status: Citrix confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the vulnerable ActiveX control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism for CLSID "238F6F83-B8B4-11CF-8771-00A024541EE3".
Council Site Actions: Two of the responding council sites are addressing this issue. One site will address in their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. They will expedite or set the kill-bit if an exploit is released. The other site mostly has clients connecting from Mac OS X machines. They will send an email to potentially affected users.
Description: Computer Associates BrightStor ARCServe, a common enterprise backup solution, contains a buffer overflow vulnerability. By sending a specially-crafted request to the ARCServe process, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. Currently, only the Microsoft Windows versions of the software are believed vulnerable. Because multiple vulnerabilities have been found in the Computer Associates backup products over the past few years, users are advised to block all ports opened by the software at the network perimeter.
Status: Computer Associates confirmed, updates available.
Description: AOL's client software includes the CDDBControlAOL ActiveX control, which contains a buffer overflow vulnerability in its "SetClientInfo()" method. By passing an overlong "ClientId" argument to this method, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. In the default configuration, this method is not exploitable, however, it is possible to automatically alter the configuration to a vulnerable state by instantiating the CerebusCDPlayer ActiveX control. This may be related to an earlier issue with the CDDBControl ActiveX control outlined in an earlier edition of @RISK.
Status: AOL confirmed, updates available through AOL's automatic update feature.
Description: Trend Micro OfficeScan, a popular enterprise security suite, contains multiple buffer overflows in its web console. By sending specially-crafted requests to the "Wizard.exe" or "CgiRemoteInstall.exe" programs, an attacker could exploit these buffer overflows and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the affected process. Note that authentication is required to exploit these vulnerabilities. Users are advised to limit access to the web console if possible.
Status: Trend Micro confirmed, updates available. Referneces: Trend Micro Readme Files http://www.trendmicro.com /ftp/documentation/readme/osce_73_win_en_patch1.1_readme.txt"> http://www.trendmicro.com /ftp/documentation/readme/osce_73_win_en_patch1.1_readm
e.txt http://www.trendmicro.com /ftp/documentation/readme/OSCE_6.5_win_en_patch8_Readme.txt"> http://www.trendmicro.com /ftp/documentation/readme/OSCE_6.5_win_en_patch8_Readme
.txt Trend Micro Home Page http://www.trendmicro.com SecurityFocus BID http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/21442
Description: MadWifi, an open source interface to Atheros-chipset based wireless cards, contains multiple vulnerabilities in its "giwscan_cb()" and "encode_ie()" functions. By sending a malformed beacon or probe response frame, an attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities and take complete control of the affected system. No authentication is required, and attackers need only be within wireless range of the vulnerable system. Note that the affected system may need to be actively probing for wireless networks to be vulnerable. MadWifi is available for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as well as other operating systems. These vulnerabilities are similar to others reported in earlier issues of @RISK.
Status: MadWifi 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 5301 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
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