This report contains so many critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office that readers might well miss the notices of important vulnerabilities in Apple Mac OS, in two Cisco security products, in PHP, HP-UX and even in a popular BitTorrent client.
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).
***************** Sponsored By Fiberlink Communications *****************
Mobile Preparedness for Business Continuity. Are you prepared to turn office workers into mobile workers during times of crisis? Does your plan consider complete endpoint security and easy-to-use network connectivity for all users? This whitepaper discusses steps you should take to ensure protection and productivity during an emergency. http://www.sans.org/info/3591 ************************************************************************* Announcing SANS 2007 in San Diego Mar 29-April 6 More than 50 immersion courses plus a big expo all on the ocean. Why SANS? "I have attended courses by several of SANS rivals, and SANS blew them away." (Alton Thompson, US Marines). http://www.sans.org/sans2007/event.php *************************************************************************
*************************** Sponsored Link: ***************************
1) The SANS Encryption Summit, April 23-25, provides concrete, actionable information you can deploy as soon as you return to work. http://www.sans.org/info/3596 *************************************************************************
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: The Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) is used to access databases and other data storage systems, and is installed by default on Microsoft Windows. The "ADODB.Connection" ActiveX control, installed as part of MDAC, contains a buffer overflow vulnerability. A web page that instantiates this control could exploit this overflow and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Technical details and a working exploit for this vulnerability are publicly available. Additionally, exploit code targeting arbitrary ActiveX controls is widely available and easily adaptable to take advantage of this vulnerability. Other vulnerabilities in MDAC have been widely exploited in the past.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: Microsoft Office contains multiple vulnerabilities:
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: Microsoft Word contains multiple memory corruption vulnerabilities that arise from the way Word parses documents containing data structures such as drawing objects, strings etc. In addition, certain specially crafted Word files containing macros will execute those macros without any user prompting. These vulnerabilities can result in arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user. Several working exploits and proofs-of-concept are publicly available, and some of these flaws have been being actively exploited prior to the announcement of this bulletin. Two of these vulnerabilities are being exploited by the "Trojan.Mdropper.X" and "Trojan.Mdropper.Y" viruses.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: Microsoft HTML Help is Microsoft's standard format for help documents. The Microsoft HTML Help ActiveX control, used to view these documents, contains a buffer overflow vulnerability. A web page that instantiates this control could trigger this overflow and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Full technical details for this vulnerability are not believed to be publicly available, but similar exploits have been widely exploited in the past. Reusable exploit code targeting arbitrary ActiveX controls is widely available and easily adaptable.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available. Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: The Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, used by various Microsoft products to scan for and detect malware, contains an integer overflow vulnerability. A specially-crafted Portable Document Format (PDF) file could trigger this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the process accessing the document (typically SYSTEM). In many cases (for example, email gateways that automatically scan attachments), no user interaction is necessary to exploit this vulnerability. Malicious documents could be delivered to vulnerable systems via email, web, instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing, etc.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: Microsoft Internet Explorer contains multiple vulnerabilities:
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: The Microsoft Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Dialog component, contains a memory corruption vulnerability. A specially-crafted Rich Text Format (RTF) document that embeds an OLE component could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. The Microsoft security bulletin says the user must interact with the embedded component to trigger the vulnerability.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: The Microsoft MFC component, shipped with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, contains a memory corruption vulnerability. A specially-crafted Rich Text Format (RTF) document that embeds an Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) component could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. According to the security bulletin, the user must interact with the embedded component to trigger the vulnerability. This issue is believed to be related to MS07-011, above.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: The Microsoft RichEdit component contains a memory corruption vulnerability. A specially-crafted Rich Text Format (RTF) document that embeds a Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) component could exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. According to the security bulletin, the user must interact with the embedded component to trigger the vulnerability. This issue is believed to be related to MS07-011, above.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: Apple Mac OS X contains multiple vulnerabilities:
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the responding council sites is using the affected software and they plan to distribute the update during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window.
Description: PHP contains multiple remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities. Specially-crafted requests could trigger these vulnerabilities and potentially lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the PHP process, arbitrary file overwrites, denials-of-service, and other conditions. According to the PHP advisory, some of these vulnerabilities are remotely exploitable. While no in-depth technical information has been published, because PHP is open source, technical details can be obtained via source code analysis.
Status: PHP confirmed, updates available. Versions 4.4.5 and 5.2.1 released to fix the flaws. Council Site Actions: Not officially in use here. Non-corporate users advised to update.
Description: HP-UX, HP's UNIX-based operating system, contains a flaw in its "SLSd_daemon" program. This program is used to provide distributed access to graphics hardware. A specially-crafted request to the RPC service provided by this program could allow an attacker to write an arbitrary file to any location on the filesystem, with root privileges. By overwriting certain files, an attacker could completely compromise the vulnerable system. Some technical details for this vulnerability are publicly available.
Status: HP confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Two of the responding council sites are using the affected software. One site has SLSd disabled on all of their HP-UX systems. The other will deploy the update during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance cycle.
Description: Microsoft Step-by-Step Interactive Training, used to train end users using a variety of methods, contains a buffer overflow vulnerability. A specially-crafted bookmark file (a file used by the Interactive Training system to store links to topics and other information) could exploit this vulnerability. Successfully exploiting this vulnerability would allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, depending on the configuration, bookmark files may be automatically opened without prompting. Some technical details for this vulnerability are publicly available.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are responding to the Microsoft issues in the same manner. They plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance window. Some sites will use accelerated update pushes for higher criticality items.
Description: uTorrent, a popular BitTorrent client, contains a buffer overflow. A specially-crafted request could trigger this buffer overflow and allow arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Technical details and a working exploit are publicly available for this exploit. Note that BitTorrent clients are often connected to large numbers of other systems, and for long periods of time, allowing for more opportunities for exploitation.
Status: uTorrent confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: The affected software and/or configuration are not in production or widespread use, or are not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary. References; uTorrent Change Log http://download.utorrent.com/1.6.1/utorrent-1.6.1.txt Exploit http://downloads.securityfocus.com/vulnerabilities/exploits/22533.c Wikipedia Article on BitTorrent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent uTorrent Home Page http://www.utorrent.com SecurityFocus BID http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/22530
Description: Cisco's Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) contains multiple vulnerabilities:
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: The affected software and/or configuration are not in production or widespread use, or are not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: The Cisco Firewall Services Module, an integrated firewall module for Cisco Catalyst switches and Cisco routers, contains multiple vulnerabilities:
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: The affected software and/or configuration are not in production or widespread use, or are not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: The Sun Solaris/SunOS telnet daemon vulnerability discussed in last week's issue of @RISK has been patched by Sun. Users are advised to apply this patch as quickly as possible.
Part II: Weekly Comprehensive List of Newly Discovered Vulnerabilities Week 8 2007 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 5378 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.