Internet Explorer (WMF vulnerability leads to remote execution on Win2K and ME), JAVA, and Lotus Notes users are all facing important new vulnerabilities this week. And an exploit has been released that takes advantage of FireFox users who have not patched their systems.
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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Part I for this issue has been compiled by Rohit Dhamankar and Rob King 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: A vulnerability, which was initially reported to cause a denial-of-service in Internet Explorer, has now been confirmed to lead to remote code execution. This flaw exists in Internet Explorer's handling of Windows metafiles, and can be reportedly triggered by a WMF file with a specially crafted header. The malicious WMF image can be posted on a webpage, shared folder or sent in an email. Note that this vulnerability is different from the one patched by the security bulletin MS06-001. The technical details required to craft a malicious WMF file have been posted.
Status: Microsoft is aware of the flaw but no patches are available. Upgrade to Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 that is not vulnerable.
Council Site Actions: Most of the council sites are not running IE on Win2k or ME thus no action was needed. One site was waiting for patches and a second site has already upgraded to version 6 and prohibits web browsing from servers. Another site has requested that folks still on the older platforms upgrade to the latest release as soon as possible.
Description: The Sun Java Plug-in technology, a part of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), enables applets on websites to run on a client's browser. The Java Security Manager controls the resources a downloaded applet can access ("sandbox" model). Multiple vulnerabilities in the Sun JRE Reflection API can be exploited by a malicious applet to break out of this "sandbox", and access any local resources. As a result, if a user browses a webpage containing the malicious applet, the applet may be able to read/write files or execute arbitrary commands on the client system with the privileges of the logged-on user. Note that applets are automatically downloaded and executed in typical browser configurations, and past vulnerabilities in JRE have been exploited in the wild.
Status: Sun has released fixed versions for the affected software.
Council Site Actions: Several of the council sites have already begun the patching process. Another site will soon begin the test and QA process since JRE is used by a large number of applications. A final site commented that they had not upgraded to the affected version and had deployed A/V gateways for web and email as well as mobile code inspection engines that filter Java, JavaScript, and ActiveX downloads for malicious patterns. They plan to upgrade to the new release in the near future.
Description: IBM Lotus Notes enjoys a significant share of the e-mail client market with a large number of enterprise deployments. Lotus Notes contains a number of stack-based buffer overflows that can be exploited to execute arbitrary code when a Notes user views a specially crafted attachment or clicks on a link within a crafted e-mail. The flaws can be triggered by specially crafted ZIP, TAR and UUE archives containing an overlong filename or an email containing an overlong link (more than 800 characters). In addition, the program also contains a directory traversal vulnerability while handling ZIP, TAR and UUE archives. This flaw can be exploited to overwrite files in a local directory such as "Startup" on Windows. Note that user interaction is required to exploit these vulnerabilities.
Status: IBM has released fixed versions 6.5.5 and 7.0.1.
Council Site Actions: Most of the council sites do not officially support Firefox. However, they are making the latest release available for their users. Some sites have automatic update turned on and thus have already received the patch/update. One site is blocking the affected versions at their proxy servers.
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 4879 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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