A favor please. We would be most appreciative if you could take a couple of minutes to answer two questions about @RISK and the Top 20?
1. About @RISK: For your own organization, how does @RISK actually help you now and what could we add to or how could we change the format or include or exclude information to make it more valuable?
2. About the annual Top 20 Internet Security Threats first: Do you think an annual or semi-annual or quarterly summary report is necessary or valuable? If you have looked at the Top20, do you think the current categorization is OK or can you think of improvements (If you want to see a copy to shape your answers, just email me at apaller@sans.org). Are there any things we can do to improve the value of the Top20 for you to put it to use?
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This week, Tivoli Provisioning Manager users a significant threat and should already be blocking ports 8080 and 443 (#2). Also the WinAmp utility that is extremely widely used can be used to gain complete control of users' computers. (#1)
@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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SANSFIRE 07 in Washington DC Features the Internet Storm Center Experts
No one knows the newest attacks better than the Internet Storm Center Incident Handlers, and they are sharing the newest attacks and defenses in evening sessions during SANSFIRE in Washington DC, July 25-August 7, 2007. Anyone who attends a course can also attend Internet Storm Center Threat Updates. For a list of courses http://www.sans.org/sansfire07/
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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: NullSoft Winamp, a popular media player for Microsoft Windows, contains a flaw in its parsing of MP4 files. MP4 files (also called MPEG-4 Part 14 files) are used to store digital media streams such as music and video. A specially-crafted MP4 file could trigger a buffer overflow that can be exploited by an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, depending on configuration, MP4 files may be opened automatically by Winamp without prompting. Full technical details and a working exploit are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: NullSoft confirmed, no updates available. NullSoft has stated that the next version of Winamp will fix this vulnerability.
Description: IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment ("Provisioning Manager") is used to manage installations of operating systems across an enterprise. The Provisioning Manager contains multiple buffer overflows in the way it handles HTTP and HTTPS requests to its web-based administration interface. This interface runs by default on TCP ports 8080 and 443. Several elements of the request are not properly checked for length before being passed to unsafe code; an overlong value in any of these elements will result in a stack-based buffer overflow. The fields known to be vulnerable include the HTTP URI path, and the HTTP "Host" and "Authorization" headers. Full technical details are available for this vulnerability. No authentication is necessary to exploit this vulnerability. Note that TCP port 443 is open to the Internet in many enterprises.
Status: IBM confirmed, updates available. Users are advised to block access to TCP ports 8080 and 443 at the network perimeter, if possible.
Description: The Cisco PIX firewall is a popular enterprise firewall solution. The Cisco ASA is a popular firewall appliance that also provides routing and intrusion prevention services. Both of these devices may be configured to use the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for authentication. If these devices are configured to use LDAP authentication and to terminate VPN connections using the L2TP IPsec protocol, and are further configured to authenticate those sessions using CHAP or MS-CHAP, an attacker could bypass the authentication system and gain access to the VPN without providing authentication credentials. Additionally, if the device uses LDAP to authenticate administrative sessions, an attacker could bypass the authentication system to access the device's management interface. Note that both devices limit the IP addresses that can connect to the administrative interface by default. Cisco has also reported that these devices are subject to two denial-of-service attacks, which could prevent them from properly terminating VPN traffic, or to stop transmitting traffic altogether.
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available.
Description: LiveData Protocol Server provides real-time data acquisition and process control in SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) environments. The server exports a SOAP remote procedure call interface via an included HTTP server. This SOAP interface does not properly handle requests for WSDL (Web Services Description Language) files: by specifying a negative value, an attacker could trigger a memory access violation. This will cause the server to crash, leading to a denial-of-service condition. There is some speculation that this flaw could lead to remote code execution, but this would depend on other, currently unconfirmed, flaws existing in the system. The vulnerable HTTP server runs on TCP port 8080 by default.
Status: LiveData confirmed, updates available.
Description: Trillian is a popular multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) application. Trillian supports the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, commonly known as the Rendezvous or Jabber protocols), as well as the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol. Its handling of these protocols leads to multiple vulnerabilities: (a) Trillian contains a flaw in its processing of XMPP messages. By sending a specially-crafted XMPP message to a user running Trillian and using XMPP messaging, an attacker could trigger a memory corruption vulnerability. (b) A specially-crafted IRC message containing an HTML "font" tag with an overlong "face" attribute could trigger a memory corruption vulnerability. (c) A specially-crafted IRC message containing URL which contains an overly-long string of UTF-8 encoded characters could trigger a buffer overflow if this URL is highlighted by the vulnerable user. Successfully exploiting any of these vulnerabilities could lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user.
Status: Cerulean Studios confirmed, updates available.
Description: ISC BIND, the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (formerly Daemon), is by far the most popular Domain Name System (DNS) server on the Internet. BIND fails to properly handle certain sequences of DNS queries. An attacker sending a specially-crafted sequence of queries could trigger a denial-of-service condition, preventing further DNS queries. Note that BIND is vulnerable in its default configuration, and by nature most BIND (and other DNS) servers are exposed to the public Internet. Note that since BIND is open source, technical details for this vulnerability can be obtained via source code analysis. The default configuration of BIND may be altered by operating system vendors and integrators; it is recommended that users verify their BIND configurations.
Status: ISC confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling DNS recursion by adding the line "recursion no" to the "named.conf" file, if recursive querying is not required.
Description: Aventail Connect, the client used to connect to VPN networks using the Aventail VPN appliance, contains a buffer overflow in its handling of Domain Name System (DNS) requests. The VPN client intercepts all regular DNS queries from applications running on the local system. An overly-long hostname in the DNS query could result in a buffer overflow. Successfully exploiting this buffer overflow could lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by causing the victim to perform a DNS query via a specially crafted web page or email. DNS queries are initiated by almost all network applications, therefore an attacker would have many vectors for exploitation. Some technical details and a simple proof-of-concept are available for this vulnerability.
Status: Aventail not confirmed, no updates available.
Description: WordTube and wp-Table are plugins for the popular WordPress blogging suite. WordTube is used to embed media such as movies into WordPress blog postings. wp-Table is used to create HTML tables in WordPress blog postings. These plugins contain PHP file inclusion vulnerabilities in their handling of the "wpPATH" parameter in HTTP requests. By sending a request with a specially-crafted "wpPATH" parameter, an attacker could include arbitrary PHP code in the application. This code would run with the privileges of the web server process. Note that, to be vulnerable, the PHP "register_globals" parameter must be enabled; it is disabled by default on recent versions of PHP. A working exploit for these vulnerabilities is publicly available.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: IrfanView, a popular image viewing and conversion application for Microsoft Windows, contains a flaw in its handling of IFF (Interchange File Format) files. A specially-crafted IFF file could trigger a buffer overflow in IrfanView. Successfully exploiting this buffer overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, depending on configuration, IFF files may be opened automatically by IrfanView without prompting. Technical details and a working exploit are available for this vulnerability. Note that it is unclear if all IFF files are capable of triggering this vulnerability: IFF was originally developed for the Commodore Amiga and was designed to carry arbitrary data, including image data. IFF images are generally stored in ILBM (Inter-Leaved Bit Map) format. It is currently believed that only IFF files containing ILBM data will trigger this vulnerablity.
Status: IrfanView has not confirmed, no updates available.
Description: The vulnerability in Apple's QuickTime leading to remote code execution on Java-enabled web browsers has been patched by Apple, and the details for this vulnerability have been publicly disclosed. This patch is available via Apple's Software Update facility.
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 5445 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
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