Novell Netware is showing up increasingly in @RISK. It is no longer protected by the presumption that it is not widely used; too many organizations have legacy installations of Netware that support executive staff and are ripe for industrial and nation-state espionage activities. In fact, there is an overall trend toward attacks against systems that are not patched through automated services like Microsoft's SMS. The @RISK editorial board will be starting a new section focusing on what works in protecting systems that cannot be easily patched. If you have implemented (or tried and discarded) any system or process to protect unpatched or unpatchable systems, please let us know. We'll keep your name and organization confidential. Email apaller@sans.org.
Here are a few more of the questions with which this new @RISK initiative will deal: (1) What mitigation or defense-in-depth strategies lesson the burden of patching or help in situations where you are unable to patch? (2) How to deal with/respond to critical vulnerabilities that are part of unsupported software for your organization? (3) How to deal with unsupported/non-standard systems which are running applications and software which are vulnerable? 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).
*************************************************************************
TRAINING UPDATE The BIGGEST security event of the fall is SANS Network Security 2007 (September 22-30) in Las Vegas with more than 40 courses and wonderful evening sessions and a big vendor exposition. It brings you the top rated teachers in cybersecurity in the world, teaching the most up to date, hands-on courses. How good are the courses? Here's what past attendees said: "You learn something new every day...the experience of the instructor and of the students make the difference." (Gabriel Schmitt, Hoffmann-LaRoche) "An extraordinary amount of information covered in a week, backed up with excellent documentation for those long winter nights." (Keith Mellism, Canada Life) "This course has valuable information that can be implemented immediately in the work place." (Christopher O'Brien, Booz Allen Hamilton) "You will never ever find anything more valuable than SANS super knowledge. Worth the price!!" (Carlos Fragoso, CESCA) Registration information: http://www.sans.org/ns2007/
*************************************************************************
Part I for this issue has been compiled by 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: The Novell NetWare Client for Windows, used to provide access to Novell NetWare services on Microsoft Windows systems, contains multiple vulnerabilities. This client exports multiple Remote Procedure Call (RPC) interfaces. Failure to properly handle values passed to several of these interfaces can lead to buffer overflow vulnerabilities. A specially crafted RPC request could exploit these vulnerabilities and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. No authentication is required to exploit these vulnerabilities.
Status: Novell confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Oracle JInitiator ActiveX control allows users to execute Oracle Developer Server applications inside Microsoft Internet Explorer. This control contains multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities. A malicious web page that instantiates this control could exploit these vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.
Status: Oracle has not confirmed, no updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the vulnerable control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism for CLSID "9b935470-ad4a-11d5-b63e-00c04faedb18". Note that disabling the control will impact normal application functionality.
Description: Microsoft MSN Messenger, Microsoft's popular instant messaging application, contains a buffer overflow vulnerability in its handling of videoconferencing. A specially crafted video stream in a videoconference could trigger this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that the user would first have to accept a videoconferencing invitation from the attacker. A proof-of-concept for this vulnerability is publicly available.
Status: Microsoft has not confirmed. Microsoft Windows Live Messenger version 8.1 is confirmed to not be vulnerable.
Description: Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo!'s popular instant messaging client, contains multiple buffer overflows in its "YVerInfo" ActiveX control. A malicious web page that instantiates this ActiveX control could trigger one of these buffer overflows to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that these vulnerabilities are only exploitable if the ActiveX controls believe they have been instantiated from a web page in the "yahoo.com" domain. An attacker must either spoof a yahoo.com domain or leverage a cross-site scripting vulnerability in an existing Yahoo web page to successfully exploit these vulnerabilities. Some technical details for these vulnerabilities are publicly available.
Status: Yahoo! confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of these vulnerabilities by disabling the affected control using Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism for CLSID "D5184A39-CBDF-4A4F-AC1A-7A45A852C883".
Description: The Red Hat Network Satellite Server is a proxy server that allows systems running Red Hat Linux to download updates from the Red Hat Network even when they are not directly connected to the internet. This application exports an XML-RPC interface that fails to properly validate user input. An authenticated user that sends a specially crafted request to the satellite server could exploit this flaw to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the "apache" user.
Status: Red Hat confirmed, updates available.
Description: The ACTi Network Video Recorder allows users to record video for surveillance purposes. The ActiveX controls installed by this application contains multiple vulnerabilities. The control's "SetText" method contains a buffer overflow vulnerability, while the "DeleteXMLFile" and "SaveXMLFile" methods allow arbitrary file deletion and overwriting. A malicious web page that instantiates these controls would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or modify files with the privileges of the current user. Multiple proofs-of-concept are available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: ACTi has not confirmed, no updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of these vulnerabilities by disabling the affected ActiveX controls.
Description: Alpha Centauri SIDVault is a popular Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server for Microsoft Windows and Linux systems. This server fails to properly handle several types of requests, leading to multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities. An attacker who successfully exploits one of these vulnerabilities could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (often root/SYSTEM). Multiple proofs-of-concept are publicly available.
Status: Alpha Centauri confirmed, updates available.
Description: Hexamail is a popular, commercial, cross-platform mail solution. It includes an integrated POP3 mail server. This server fails to properly handle overlong usernames during authentication. A specially crafted username could trigger a buffer overflow in the server and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (often SYSTEM). A proof-of-concept for this vulnerability is publicly available.
Status: Hexamail has not confirmed, no updates available.
Description: BitchX is a popular Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for Unix and Unix-like systems. It fails to properly process IRC "MODE" commands, leading to a buffer overflow. A malicious server that sent a specially crafted MODE command could trigger this buffer overflow, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that a user must first connect to a malicious IRC server. A proof-of-concept is available for this vulnerability.
Status: BitchX has not confirmed, no updates available.
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 5549 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 by the SANS Institute 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.