This week's most critical new vulnerabilities were found in Oracle and in Trillian, an instant messaging client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. Proof of concept code has been published for the Trillian flaw but the company that sells it, Cerulian Labs, has not confirmed that the flaw exists. The Oracle flaws include remote code execution vulnerabilities, SQL injection, cross-site-scripting and information disclosure vulnerabilities. Computer Associate's security and backup tools also have multiple newly discovered vulnerabilities as does Firefox.
Despite the flaws it announced this week, Oracle, more than any other software company except Microsoft, seems to be on the way to improving its secure programming tools and, particularly the secure coding skills of its programmers. More than 150 companies that are developing secure coding programs are coming to Washington in three weeks to hear VISA clarify the application security requirements in the PCI standard, and to hear application security pioneers from Morgan Stanley, Cisco, LexisNexis, Oracle, Honeywell, Sovereign Bank, Depository Trust, Polk, TSA, Ounce, SpiDynamics, TippingPoint, and the FBI share the lessons they learned in establishing their secure application development programs: how to manage outsourced application development securely; how to get the developers engaged; how to pick the right tools; how to train and test programmer skills and much more. If you are building an application security program and/or if you are subject to PCI, attending the Application Security Summit will save you months of research and will help you avoid the pitfalls that have hurt other programs. Agenda and registration: http://www.sans.org/appsummit07 Companies attending the Summit also get scholarships for two of their programmers to participate in the Secure Software Certification Examinations (in Java and in C) the day before the Summit. Details: http://www.sans.org/gssp07/ Questions: email apaller@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).
************************** Sponsored By SANS ****************************
Do you know common security flaws? Can you find them in your code and correct them? Be one of the first to pass the GSSP Exams in C and Java. Check out the test blueprints, try the sample tests and look at the test specs. Then sign up for one of only 100 pilot test openings. Register at: http://www.sans.org/info/11591
*************************************************************************
************************* Sponsored Links: ****************************
1) Register NOW for any SANS OnDemand course and receive 10% off http://www.sans.org/info/11596 Discount code: NL_OD15
2) Spend Year End money with SANS Vouchers http://www.sans.org/info/11601
*************************************************************************
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: Cerulean Studios Trillian, a popular multi-protocol instant messaging client for Microsoft Windows, contains multiple flaws in its handling of URIs. Trillian registers itself as the handler for multiple URI schemes, including "aim:" URIs using the "aim:" scheme are used to initiate an AOL Instant Messenger session. A specially crafted or overlong URI using this scheme and passed to Trillian could trigger a command execution or buffer overflow vulnerability. In either case, a specially crafted web page or email message would be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Depending upon configuration, users may or may not be notified that Trillian is being invoked to handle a URI when a link is clicked. Some technical details and two proofs-of-concept are available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Cerulean Studios has not confirmed, no updates available.
Council Site Actions: The affected software and/or configuration is not in production or widespread use, or is not officially supported at any of the responding council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: Oracle has released their Critical Patch Update for July of 2007. Flaws addressed in this update include remote code execution vulnerabilities, SQL injection vulnerabilities, and cross-site-scripting and information disclosure vulnerabilities. Successfully exploiting one of the vulnerabilities could potentially allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or SQL queries with the privileges of the database user. Currently, it is believed that authentication is required to exploit the more severe vulnerabilities; however, authentication may be afforded through SQL injection attacks in Internet-facing web servers or other publicly accessible systems.
Status: Oracle confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are still performing regression testing or reviewing/assessing their level of impact. Most will address these flaws in their regular quarterly Oracle update process.
Status: Mozilla confirmed, updates available. Council Site Status: Most of the reporting council sites do not officially support Firefox; however, they do have a growing number of Firefox users. Most of their users tend to have the auto-update feature enabled. Users will be notified of the issue to ensure updates take place.
Description: The Computer Associates Alert Notification Server is included in several Computer Associates products and used to accept notifications of events. It exports an MS-RPC interface. Several procedures exposed via this interface contain buffer overflows. A specially crafted request to one of these procedures could exploit one of these buffer overflows. Successful exploitation would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (usually SYSTEM). Note that on Windows 2000 systems, no authentication would be necessary to exploit these vulnerabilities; other Windows systems would require authentication.
Status: Computer Associates confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the reporting council sites is using the affected software and they are still researching the impact before deciding on the best course of action.
Description: Ipswitch IMail, a popular enterprise mail sever for Microsoft Windows, contains multiple buffer overflows in its handling of Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) messages. An overlong IMAP "search" or "search charset" command could trigger buffer overflows in the vulnerable application. Successfully exploiting these overflows would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (usually SYSTEM). Note that an attacker would require valid authentication credentials to exploit these vulnerabilities.
Status: Ipswitch confirmed, updates available. Council Site Status: The affected software is not in production or widespread use, or is not officially supported at any of the responding council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: The "tcpdump" command is provided on many Unix and Unix-like systems and is used to provide a raw packet capture or snapshot of network traffic on the local network. It is often used by network administrators and network administration tools for traffic capture and analysis. A specially crafted packet could overflow a static buffer in any tcpdump process capturing traffic. Because tcpdump by default monitors all traffic on the local network, no authentication is necessary to exploit this vulnerability. However, an attacker would need a way to inject arbitrary traffic onto the local network. Successfully exploiting this overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (usually root). Note that tcpdump is included by default on most Unix, Unix-like, and Linux-based operating systems (including Apple Mac OS X). Full technical details and working proof-of-concept are available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. Council Site Status: Several of the reporting council sites are using tcpdump. At one site their RHE servers and desktops will be updated via the Up2Date option. They will advise the other users to upgrade. The other sites report plans to patch.
Description: Trend Micro OfficeScan, a popular enterprise virus scanning solution, contains an authentication bypass vulnerability in its web-based administration console. Authentication credentials are generated by an ActiveX control instantiated by the login page and then sent to the server. By sending an empty authentication request, an attacker could log into the administration console and alter OfficeScan configuration. Note that this would also allow an attacker to alter the configuration of the antivirus system on clients controlled by the OfficeScan server. Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Trend Micro confirmed, updates available.
Description: Apple Mac OS X is reported to contain a remote code execution in its mDNSResponder subsystem. Note that this flaw is believed to be distinct from earlier flaws reported in this subsystem. According to the researcher, successfully exploiting this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. No further details are available for this vulnerability.
Status: Apple has not confirmed. The researcher has stated that a proof-of-concept exists, but it is not publicly available.
Description: SquirrelMail is a popular webmail system for PHP-enabled webservers. Its G/PGP Plugin module allows users to use PGP-based public key encryption to encrypt and digitally sign email messages. Failures to properly sanitize user input to this module would allow an attacker to inject arbitrary shell commands or PHP code into the PHP process. Successfully exploiting these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the webserver or PHP interpreter process. Note that this module is not enabled by default, but is often installed by end users.
Council Site Actions: The affected software and/or configuration is not in production or widespread use, or is 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 5465 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
(c) 2007. 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.
Subscriptions: @RISK is distributed free of charge to people responsible for managing and securing information systems and networks. You may forward this newsletter to others with such responsibility inside or outside your organization.