Another remotely exploitable vulnerability was found in Winamp, and also one in Adobe Macromedia Shockwave this week. Media player software is a prime target of attackers because hundreds of millions of copies have been distributed (often without the buyer knowing it is on his or her computer) and most people are unaware that they have to take personal responsibility for patching it. Shame on these vendors for distributing vulnerable software without ensuring their unsuspecting users have an automated updating service.
In addition, Apple Mac OS X users lost their feeling of invulnerability to security problems. A consensus of experts is that Windows users will continue switching to Macs, despite what will be a growing number of Mac vulnerability discoveries.
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: Safari, the default browser on Mac OS X systems, contains a vulnerability that allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a user's system. The problem arises because Safari opens "Safe" files automatically after downloading and also trusts the user-supplied metadata associated with a file. For instance, an attacker can create a shell script, rename the shell script with a safe extension like ".mov" and store the metadata for the shell script in the "__MacOSX" folder. The attacker can then create a zip archive that contains the shell script and the metadata, and post this crafted zip archive on a webserver. When a user visits the attacker's site, the zip file will be automatically downloaded and the shell script executed by the program indicated by the metafile. Note that no user interaction is required to leverage this flaw other than browsing a malicious webpage. Exploit code has been publicly posted.
Status: Apple has not released an update yet. A workaround is to disable Safari's "Open safe files after downloading" option.
Council Site Actions: Only two of the reporting council sites are using/supporting MacOS. One site uses Firefox as the supported browser for the Macs; however, its Safari users were advised to disable Safari's open-safe-files option in lieu of a patch. They plan to push out the official patch when it becomes available. The second site has a large number of Mac systems. They use Apple's Software Update Facility; therefore, Safari will be updated when Apple releases a patch. This site has also started publicizing new Mac OS X threats at the top of their Central IT Department home page. They currently have two Mac OS X messages at the top, and will likely add one about this Safari issue. At this time they are undecided about recommending a reconfiguration that prevents the automatic opening of safe files.
Description: Last week another buffer overflow vulnerability was reported in Winamp. This overflow is triggered by a playlist file (m3u format) that contains a specially crafted playlist file (m3u or pls format). Note that several buffer overflows have been reported in Winamp during this month. Exploit code has not been posted for this flaw yet.
Status: Winamp has released version 5.2 that fixes all the vulnerabilities reported so far. Hence, an upgrade to this version is recommended at the earliest.
Description: According to Macromedia, the Shockwave player has been installed on more than 390 million systems. The Shockwave installer ActiveX control contains a stack-based buffer overflow that can be triggered by passing overlong parameters. A malicious webpage can exploit this flaw to execute arbitrary code on a user's system. The technical details required to craft an exploit have not been posted.
Status: Adobe Macromedia has issued a fix for the installer ActiveX control. Note that Macromedia has been pushing the security update via the automatic update feature of the player prior to this announcement.
Council Site Actions: All reporting council sites are responding to this issue. Most plan to distribute the patch during their next regularly scheduled system update process. One site will prepare an announcement that advises their end users to download the updated version of Shockwave Player.
Description: Mambo is a popularly used open-source content management system. This software contains several SQL injection vulnerabilities; One of the SQL injection vulnerabilities can be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to login with privileges of any chosen user. The software also contains local file include vulnerability arising from the lack of sanitization of user-supplied input to the "$mos_change_template" variable. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary PHP code on the Mambo server. The technical details required to craft an exploit have been posted. Note that "Mare.D" worm is reportedly exploiting prior vulnerabilities in Mambo CMS installations.
Status: Mambo has released patches for versions 4.5.3 and 4.5.3h. Mambo installations using prior versions should be upgraded to 4.5.3h.
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 4902 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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