Apple Mac OS X and the Sun Java Web Proxy (used in enterprises, ISPs and e-commerce environments for caching and filtering web content) both have critical vulnerabilities this week.
Correction: You may invite *both* your own organization's programmers as well as programmers who work for your system integrators and outsourcers, to participate in the inaugural secure coding exams in C and Java, on August 14 in Washington DC. Please select up to six programmers for the exams. Ensuring application programmers know how to find and eliminate the errors that cause security flaws is by far the most cost-effective way to improve the security of the applications you are deploying. Test participants will be eligible to earn secure programming certification, and each will receive a detailed report listing gaps in their secure programming knowledge. Participant names will be entirely confidential. Those who sign up in the next few days will also get an invitation to a webcast that helps them ensure they know what will be covered and where to find study materials. Resources: Exam blueprints and details at: www.sans-ssi.org Test information: http://www.sans.org/gssp07/ Questions: spa@sans.org
@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: Apple Mac OS X contains multiple vulnerabilities: (a) A specially-crafted Portable Document Format (PDF) file could trigger an integer overflow in the CoreGraphics subsystem. Note that PDF documents are opened without prompting. (b) Vulnerabilities in the handling of Universal Plug-and-Play (UPnP) requests lead to buffer overflows in the mDNSResponder server and the iChat instant messaging client. In both cases, a specially-crafted UPnP packet sent to the vulnerable process could exploit these buffer overflows. It is currently believed that only packets sourced from the local network can exploit these vulnerabilities, but this has not been proven. Successfully exploiting these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user or vulnerable process (note that the mDNSResponder component runs with root privileges). Additional denial-of-service, local only, and information disclosure vulnerabilities were also addressed in this update.
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the reporting council sites is using the affected software and they are already in the process of updating their systems.
Description: Sun Java System Web Proxy server (formerly Sun ONE Web Proxy server) is widely used in enterprises, ISPs and e-commerce environments for caching and filtering web content. The server supports SOCKSv5 protocol to allow applications to traverse a firewall. The "sockd" daemon contains stack-based buffer overflows that can be triggered by specially crafted SOCKSv5 requests. In the default configuration, an unauthenticated attacker can exploit the buffer overflows to execute arbitrary code with "root" privileges.
Status: Sun confirmed, upgrade to version 4.0.5. A workaround is to disable the sockd daemon, if not required.
Description: Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS) contains a flaw in the handling of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) packets destined for the device. If the device is configured to process SSL packets, a specially-crafted "ClientHello", "ChangeCipherSpec", or "Finished" message could trigger a denial-of-service condition. Note that these messages are sent in cleartext, and do not require authentication. Cisco devices configuration to process SSL packets as part of a higher-level protocol are also vulnerable; example protocols include HTTPS and Cisco WebVPN. Note that the malicious traffic must be destined specifically for the vulnerable device; traffic simply transiting the device will not lead to exploitation. The vulnerability resides in the "RSA BSAFE" libraries that are used to implement cryptography in applications. Currently only a few vendors have reported if their products using these libraries are vulnerable or not.
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Most of the responding council sites said they are not running the vulnerable configuration on their Cisco router; however, they are double-checking. One site is running the affected configuration and plans to deploy the patch during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance cycle.
Description: WordPress, a popular blogging suite, contains a SQL injection vulnerability. By sending a specially-crafted "cookie" parameter to the "Admin-Ajax.php" component, an attacker could execute arbitrary SQL statements against the database hosting WordPress, with the permissions of the WordPress database user. Full technical details and a proof of concept are available for this vulnerability.
Status: WordPress 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 responding council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: Avast! Antivirus, a popular antivirus solution, contains a flaw in its handling of CAB (Microsoft Cabinet) files (a common archive file format). A specially-crafted CAB file can trigger a buffer overflow in the application, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Note that only the managed client is currently confirmed as vulnerable.
Status: Avast! 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 responding 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 5460 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
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