Adobe Acrobat Reader is the big problem this week because the browser plug-in is used widely in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.
@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: The Adobe Acrobat Reader Browser Plugin, used to read Portable Document Format (PDF) documents inside web browsers, contains multiple vulnerabilities in the parsing of URLs pointing to PDF files. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities by including a specially-crafted "open parameters" in an URL pointing to any PDF document. "Open parameters" are used to pass addition parameters to the Adobe reader, and are placed in the "fragment" portion of the link (the portion of the link specified after the '#' sign). 1 - By passing a "javascript" URL to various open parameters, an attacker could execute arbitrary javascript in the context of the web site hosting the PDF. Hence, this flaw can be exploited to steal cookies and user credentials for any web site that is hosting a PDF file. The flaw is believed to affect only Mozilla browsers. 2 - By passing a URL to the various open parameters, an attacker can cause a web browser to send a request to any arbitrary web-accessible resource. This vulnerability affects most web browsers, including Mozilla browsers and Microsoft Internet Explorer. For example, an attacker could send a request to "example.net" by having a user click on the link " http://example.com/evil.pdf#http://example.net/". 3 - A memory corruption vulnerability can be triggered by calling "document.write" via javascript with special parameters. This vulnerability affects Mozilla browsers, and is believed to be exploitable for remote code execution (not confirmed).
Status: Adobe has confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Two of the reporting council sites are using the affected software. They both plan to deploy the patch during their next regularly schedule maintenance cycle.
Description: Apple iPhoto, a popular photo management application installed on most Apple computers, contains a format string vulnerability. A specially-crafted photocast feed (a series of photos accessible via RSS) could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. A complete proof of concept and technical details for this vulnerability are publicly available. Note that, in most common configurations, users must explicitly subscribe to a malicious photocast in order to be vulnerable. This vulnerability was disclosed as part of the "Month of Apple Bugs" project, a project whose goal is to release a bug for an Apple product every day for a month.
Status: Apple 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.
Description: Crystal Reports, a popular enterprise reporting system, contains a stack-based buffer overflow in the processing of "report" (RPT) files. A specially-crafted report file could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the Crystal Reports process. In some configurations, Crystal Reports may be configured to automatically open report files without prompting. Full technical details for this vulnerability are publicly available.
Status: Business Objects has not confirmed, no updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the reporting council sites is using the affected software and they are waiting on the vendor for more information and a patch.
Description: PowerArchiver, a popular archiving application for Microsoft Windows, contains a buffer overflow vulnerability when parsing ISO image files (commonly used to transmit CD and DVD images). A specially-crafted ISO image file containing an overlong file name could exploit this buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Full technical details and several proofs-of-concept are available for this vulnerability.
Status: PowerArchiver 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: OpenOffice.org (a popular open source office suite) and StarOffice (a commercial office suite based on the same code base) contain multiple vulnerabilities in the parsing of Windows Media Player (WMF) files. A specially-crafted Windows Media file could exploit these vulnerabilities and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, by default, Windows Media files are not opened by the these applications. Some technical details for these vulnerabilities are available, and because OpenOffice.org is open source, further details can be gained through source code analysis.
Status: OpenOffice.org and StarOffice 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.
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 5329 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
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