Three of this week's Microsoft vulnerabilities (in Internet Explorer, Windows, and DirextX) are ranked CRITICAL, meaning that immediate patching is not optional. But Microsoft has a lot of company on the HIGH list: Intuit Quickbooks, Apple Quicktime, multiple TrendMicro products, and Java for Apple Mac OS X.
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: Microsoft DirectX is Microsoft's multimedia framework for its Windows operating system. DirectX is the subsystem responsible for decoding and playing back most streaming media formats on Windows. It contains a flaw in its handling of several media file formats, including Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI), Audio Video Interleave (AVI), and WAV audio files. A specially crafted file of one of these types could trigger a buffer overflow vulnerability in the DirectX subsytem, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that the vulnerable file formats are opened without first prompting the user in the default configuration of many applications. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Advanced Systems Format (ASF) file format is a digital media container file format developed by Microsoft. The component used by Microsoft Windows (called variously the Windows Media Format Runtime and Windows Media Services) contains a flaw in its parsing of ASF files. A specially crafted ASF file could trigger this vulnerability and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. In the default configuration of most applications, ASF content is played automatically upon receipt. Any application that uses the vulnerable component is itself likely vulnerable. Known vulnerable applications include Windows Media Player. Some technical details for this vulnerability are publicly available.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Internet Explorer contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of web content. A specially crafted script running on a web page could trigger one of these vulnerabilities and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. No user interaction other than visiting a malicious page would be necessary to exploit these vulnerabilities. Some technical details for these vulnerabilities are publicly available.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Microsoft Windows Message Queueing Service (MSMQ) provides Microsoft Windows systems with a reliable, potentially asynchronous, messaging service. This service exports a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) interface, allowing remote systems to access the service on a server system. A flaw in the handling of certain calls to this RPC service leads to a buffer overflow vulnerability. A specially crafted call to this service could trigger this buffer overflow and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable service. On Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP systems, an attacker would require valid authentication credentials to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerable subsystem is not installed or enabled by default, but is often deployed. A proof-of-concept for this vulnerability is publicly available.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Intuit QuickBooks Online Edition is a web-based version of Intuit's popular QuickBooks bookkeeping software. Functionality for this software is provided by a group of ActiveX controls. Several of these controls contain multiple vulnerabilities. A malicious web page that instantiates one of these controls could trigger one of these vulnerabilities and potentially execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. These vulnerabilities may be related to a vulnerability discussed in a previous edition of @RISK. Note that Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-069, referenced above, contains updates that disable the vulnerable versions of these controls via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism.
Status: Intuit confirmed, updates available.
Description: HP Info Center is a system information and user assistance package provided by HP and Compaq for some of its desktop and notebook computers. It allows support personnel to gather system configuration information. Part of its functionality is provided by an ActiveX control. This control contains multiple vulnerabilities. A malicious web page that instantiated this control could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user, modify system configuration, or disclose arbitrary file contents. Full technical details and a proof-of-concept are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor 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 "62DDEB79-15B2-41E3-8834-D3B80493887A". Note that this may impact normal application functionality.
Description: Multiple Trend Micro products do not properly handle malformed uuencoded documents. Uuencoding is an encoding format used to encode binary data as text, allowing its transmission in text-only environments. A specially crafted document or message that has been uuencoded or contains uuencoded data could trigger a vulnerability in various Trend Micro products. Exploiting these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Note that it is possible to exploit these vulnerabilities by having a malicious document or message scanned by the software; therefore, no user interaction is required to trigger this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Apple QuickTime is Apple's streaming media framework for Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. QuickTime contains multiple vulnerabilities in the parsing of several file formats. A specially crafted QuickTime Link (QTL) file or Flash file could trigger one of these vulnerabilities and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. QuickTime files are generally opened without first prompting the user in the default configuration of most applications. Additionally, a flaw in the handling of Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) responses could trigger a buffer overflow vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Both QuickTime for Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X are reportedly vulnerable. Some of these vulnerabilities may be related to issues discussed in previous editions of @RISK.
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Description: The version of the Java Runtime Environment used by Apple Mac OS X contains several vulnerabilities. A specially crafted web page or Java application could exploit one of these vulnerabilities and allow an attacker a variety of actions including arbitrary code execution and modifying the current user's keychain. Keychains are used to store passwords and other secure information. Java applets embedded in web pages are automatically loaded without first prompting the user in most common configurations of web browsers. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities. Some of these vulnerabilities are present in the Sun Java Runtime Environment as well, while others are present only in the Apple Java Runtime Environment. Some of these vulnerabilities were discussed in prior editions of @RISK.
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is the default resource sharing protocol used by Microsoft Windows. SMBv2 is the second major version of this protocol, and provides users the ability to cryptographically sign sessions. Microsoft Windows does not properly implement the signature process. An attacker who could modify SMB traffic in transit could recompute the cryptographic signature of a packet after modifying it, allowing arbitrary modification of the SMB session without loss of perceived trust. Such an attacker would be able to do anything the legitimate user of the SMB session could do. This attack vector is an example of an exploitable Man-in-the-Middle attack.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Justsystems Ichitaro is a popular Japanese-language word processing suite. It contains a flaw in its handling of certain documents. A specially crafted document could trigger a buffer overflow vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Depending on configuration, Ichitaro documents may be opened without first prompting the user. This vulnerability is currently being actively exploited in the wild by a virus known as "Trojan.Tarodrop.F". No further technical details are available for this vulnerability.
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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