The four most critical vulnerabilities this week touch just about every Windows user: Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Word, even Kodak Image Viewer.
The Kodak threat highlights a useful, but unpleasant fact. Microsoft patched this product because it was distributed with Windows, but most of the other products you add to your computer are not patched automatically. Many vendors expect you to check with their web site to learn about flaws that need patching. The criminals know that - hence the new wave of attacks against applications. SO many vulnerabilities are being found in applications (nearly 100 this week alone in commercial applications - thousands more in in-house developed applications) that large buyers of custom and packaged software have already begun telling their suppliers and outsourcers that proof of secure coding skills is a prerequisite for being allowed to work on software that will be deployed on enterprise systems.
If anyone at your organization writes software for a living, (Strongly) encourage him or her to demonstrate mastery of secure coding at the December Secure Coding Examinations in Washington (www.sans.org/gssp).
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).
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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 Kodak Image Viewer, an application distributed with Microsoft Windows and used for viewing various image formats, contains a flaw in its handling of Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) images files. A specially crafted TIFF file could trigger a memory corruption vulnerability. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. A malicious web site hosting such an image could also exploit this vulnerability. Full technical details for this vulnerability are publicly available.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Outlook Express and Windows Mail are the default Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) clients on Microsoft Windows. NNTP, often called "netnews" or just "news" is a protocol for accessing distributed discussion groups. Microsoft Outlook Express and Windows Mail fail to properly handle certain malformed responses from NNTP servers. A specially crafted server response could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. The vulnerable applications are configured by default to open when a user accesses an NNTP URL (one beginning with "news://"), therefore a malicious website could also exploit this vulnerability. Full technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Internet Explorer contains multiple vulnerabilities that could lead to remote code execution or user interface spoofing. A failure to properly handle queued file downloads can lead to a memory corruption vulnerability. A specially crafted web page could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Other vulnerabilities allow a web page to persist and continue to interact with the web browser after a user has navigated away from that web site.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Word contains a memory corruption vulnerability in the handling of certain malformed documents. A specially crafted Microsoft Office document could trigger this vulnerability and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. The attack is believed to involve the file format used by the Apple Macintosh versions of Microsoft Office, which is not opened by all versions of the software. Note that versions of Office after Office 2000 do not automatically open documents without first prompting the user. This vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Windows with Internet Explorer 7 fails to properly sanitize URIs passed from applications. A specially crafted URI could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the current user. The flaw arises from the interaction between applications handing URIs to the Windows Shell. Several example URIs are publicly available for this vulnerability. Some applications have been patched so that they validate URIs before passing them to the Windows Shell, but other applications and the Windows Shell itself are still vulnerable.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, no updates available.
Description: IBM's DB2 Universal Database is IBM's enterprise database system.It contains multiple vulnerabilities. A flaw in its DB2JDS subsystem can lead to a buffer overflow if an overlong string is provided to the system Successfully exploiting this flaw would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Additionally, two denials-of-service have been disclosed.
Status: IBM confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of these vulnerabilities by blocking access to TCP port 6789 at the network perimeter, if possible.
Description: Computer Associates BrightStor ARCServ backup is a popular enterprise backup application. This application exports numerous Remote Procedure Call (RPC) interfaces. A specially crafted call to one of these interfaces could trigger a buffer overflow or allow users to alter system configuration without authentication. Successfully exploiting any of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Some technical details are available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Computer Associates confirmed, updates available.
Description: EMC ReplIStor is a popular backup and storage management solution from EMC. This service contains a buffer overflow in its handling of user requests. A specially crafted request to the application could exploit this buffer overflow and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (often SYSTEM). Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: EMC confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by blocking access to TCP port 7144 at the network perimeter, if possible.
Description: The Kaspersky Labs Online Virus Scanner is a web-based antivirus solution. This application installs an ActiveX control upon use, and this ActiveX control contains a format string vulnerability. A malicious web page that instantiates this control could trigger this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism for CLSID "0EB0E74A-2A76-4AB3-A7FB-9BD8C29F7F75". Note that disabling this control will prevent legitimate application usage as well.
Description: The Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a popular, free audio encoding scheme for lossless compression of audio data. The reference implementation is provided by LibFLAC. This library contains multiple integer overflow vulnerabilities. A specially crafted FLAC file could trigger one of these vulnerabilities and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Numerous popular applications, including AOL Nullsoft WinAmp and most modern open source media players, use LibFLAC and therefore may be vulnerable. Depending on system configuration, a vulnerable application may be opened automatically after a user views a FLAC file, potentially automatically provided via a web site or email message. Technical details for this vulnerability are available via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Asterisk is a popular open source Voice over IP (VoIP) solution. Asterisk can utilize IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol; a popular email retrieval and management protocol) to handle voice mail messages. A specially crafted email message, if treated as a voicemail by Asterisk, could trigger a buffer overflow in Asterisk, and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Technical details for this vulnerability are available in the vendor advisory, and can also be obtained by source code analysis. An additional buffer overflow vulnerability is also addressed in this security advisory, but would require write access to the application's configuration files to exploit.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Microsoft Windows Remote Procedure Call (RPC) subsystem contains a denial-of-service condition. When a client attempts to authenticate with the subsystem and sends a specially crafted NTLMSSP (NT LAN Manager Security Support Provider) authentication request, the client could cause the vulnerable system to restart. An attacker would not need authentication to exploit this vulnerability.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, 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.
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