The most critical vulnerabilities this week: Apple QuickTime: Partly because Apple's QuickTime gets installed automatically with iTunes, on both Macs and Windows, the newly discovered security flaws in QuickTime present a massive and fertile attack surface for criminals. This class of vulnerability (those found on personal computers - often used in offices) is both the criminals' and spies' current target of choice for building botnets and for executing targeted attacks against governments and other sensitive sites.
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: QuickTime is Apple's streaming media framework for Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. QuickTime contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of various file formats. A specially crafted PICT image file, QuickTime VR file, or other media file stored in a QuickTime container file could trigger one of several vulnerabilities. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, in most configurations, QuickTime will open vulnerable files automatically. QuickTime media may also be embedded in a web page, allowing attackers to deliver exploits via web pages. Some technical details are available for these vulnerabilities. Note that QuickTime for both Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows is affected. QuickTime is installed as part of iTunes for Microsoft Windows.
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Oracle Database Server contains a flaw in its handling of calls to the PITRIG_DROPMETADATA procedure in the XDB.XDB_PITRIG_PKG database package. Passing overlong arguments to this procedure could trigger a buffer overflow and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the database server. An attacker would need authentication to exploit this vulnerability, however, authentication may be provided by exploiting an SQL injection vulnerability in an application connected to the database. Some technical details and a proof-of-concept are available for this vulnerability.
Status: Oracle confirmed, no updates available. Oracle has stated that a patch will be released in a future Critical Patch Update.
Description: OpenBase is a popular relational database engine. The database server contains multiple vulnerabilities. A command injection vulnerability exists in several of the stored procedures in the database, while a buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the parsing of SQL queries. Successfully exploiting any of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the database server process (often SYSTEM/root). An attacker would require authorization to exploit these vulnerabilities, however authentication may be provided by exploiting an SQL injection vulnerability in an application connected to the database. Proofs-of-concept and technical details are available for these vulnerabilities in the advisory.
Status: OpenBase confirmed, updates available.
Description: The AOL AmpX ActiveX control is an ActiveX control distributed by AOL for real-time audio streaming. The control is used by AOL Radio and is commonly used to embed streaming audio in web pages. This control contains multiple buffer over vulnerabilities. A malicious web page that instantiates this control could exploit one of these buffer overflows and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Some technical details are available for this vulnerability.
Status: AOL confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the vulnerable control via Microsoft's kill bit mechanism for CLSID B49C4597-8721-4789-9250-315DFBD9F525. Note that this will disable normal application functionality.
Description: The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) is a printing system used by a number of UNIX and UNIX-like systems. CUPS can access and share printers using the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). CUPS fails to properly handle certain malformed IPP requests. A specially crafted IPP request could trigger a buffer overflow. Successfully exploiting this buffer overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the CUPS server process. Technical details for this vulnerability are available in the CUPS bug report and via source code analysis. CUPS forms the basis of the printing systems on Apple Mac OS X and numerous Linux distributions, as well as other UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Note that, in many common configurations, CUPS is not remotely vulnerable to this issue. Unconfirmed reports indicate that this issue may be exploitable only by users on the local network.
Status: CUPS confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions Library (PCRE) is a popular library implementing regular expression operations compatible with those implemented in the Perl programming language. Regular expressions are strings that define matches for other strings and data. A specially crafted regular expression passed to the library could trigger one of several vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities include several buffer and integer overflow vulnerabilities, the exploitation of which would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Denial-of-service and information disclosure vulnerabilities are also present. Note that the attacker must be able to pass regular expressions into the library to successfully exploit these vulnerabilities; applications that do not accept arbitrary regular expressions are not vulnerable. This library is widely used by numerous applications. Technical details are available via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Xpdf is a Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer for the X Window System, and also forms the basis of other PDF viewers, including Kpdf for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). A specially crafted PDF file passed to the application could trigger one of several buffer overflow or memory corruption vulnerabilities. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, depending on the application and configuration, PDF documents may be opened automatically upon download. Technical details for these vulnerabilities are available in the security advisory and via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Link Grammar Parser Library (LGL) is a natural language parsing library based on the theory of link grammars. The library contains a buffer overflow in its handling of sentences. An overlong word in a sentence can trigger this buffer overflow and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. The AbiWord open source word processor uses the LGL to perform grammar checking; therefore a specially crafted AbiWord document may be able to exploit this vulnerability. Other applications may use this library for language parsing. Some technical details are available for this vulnerability in the advisory and via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor 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.
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