A week without critical Microsoft vulnerabilities. Apple and Sun had system level vulnerabilities reported this week but most of the reports of vulnerabilities rated critical and high danger are for applications: CA ArcServe (backup), IBM Informix (database), Business Objects (business intelligence), F-Secure (security). And web application vulnerabilities are continuing to grow out of control. If you buy or build custom applications, try to come to the Web Application Security Summit ( http://www.sans.org/appsec08_summit) and/or the Pen Testing Summit ( http://www.sans.org/pentesting08_summit ) in Las Vegas in late May. You'll find out what actually works in reducing application vulnerabilities.
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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TRAINING UPDATE Where can you find the newest Penetration Testing techniques, Application Pen Testing, Hacker Exploits, Secure Web Application Development, Security Essentials, Forensics, Wireless, Auditing, CISSP, and SANS' other top-rated courses? - - SANS 2008 in Orlando (4/18-4/25) SANS' biggest program with myriad bonus sessions and a huge exhibition of security products: http://www.sans.org/sans2008 - - Washington DC (Tyson's) 3/24-3/31 http://www.sans.org/tysonscorner08 - - San Diego (5/9-5/16) http://www.sans.org/securitywest08 - - Toronto (5/10-5/16) http://www.sans.org/toronto08 - - and in 100 other cites and on line any-time: www.sans.org
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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: IBM Informix Dynamic Server is a popular enterprise database management system. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in the handling of user login requests. An overlong password or database path parameter could trigger a buffer overflow vulnerability. Successfully exploiting one of these buffer overflows would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Note that both of these vulnerabilities can be exploited without authentication. Some technical details for these vulnerabilities are publicly available.
Status: IBM confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of these vulnerabilities by blocking access to TCP port 1526 at the network perimeter.
Description: Apple Mac OS contains multiple vulnerabilities in a variety of subsystems and components. These vulnerabilities range in severity from remote code execution to denials-of-service, cross-site-scripting, and information disclosure. In some cases, these vulnerabilities are related to third-party products included in Mac OS X, while others are specific to the operating system. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Description: Safari is Apple's web browser for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of a variety of inputs. Most of these vulnerabilities can lead to cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities, but at least one vulnerabilities has been shown to lead to arbitrary code execution with the privilege of the current user. These vulnerabilities could be exploited by a malicious web page. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities. Both Safari for Mac OS X and Microsoft WIndows are affected.
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Description: Asterisk is a popular open source Internet telephony engine. It is widely used to provide Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) services. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of various user requests. By exploiting these vulnerabilities, users can execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process, bypass call authentication mechanisms, and create a denial-of-service condition. Note that exploiting this vulnerabilities may interfere with telephony services, including emergency services. At least one proof-of-concept for these vulnerabilities is publicly available and further details are available via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: MDaemon is a popular mail suite for Microsoft Windows systems. It contains a flaw in its handling of certain Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) commands. A specially crafted request could lead to a buffer overflow. Successfully exploiting this buffer overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (often SYSTEM). Note that authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability. A proof-of-concept is publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor has not confirmed, no updates available.
Description: MIT Kerberos is the reference implementation of the Kerberos authentication protocol, a protocol used for secure authentication across potentially insecure networks. The implementation from MIT contains several flaws in its handling of user requests. A specially crafted request could result in a denial-of-service condition or potential disclosure of user authentication credentials. At least one of the reported vulnerabilities is believed to be exploitable for remote code execution, but this has not been confirmed. Systems running Kerberos generally have copies of numerous users' authentication credentials, meaning that exploitation of a Kerberos server can lead to subsequent exploitation of other systems. Full technical details for these vulnerabilities is publicly available via source code analysis. MIT's implementation of Kerberos is used as the basis of numerous other Kerberos implementations, and is the default Kerberos implementation on most Linux systems.
Status: MIT confirmed, updates available.
Description: BusinessObjects provides reporting and business management software to enterprises. It distributes an ActiveX control with some of its software known as "RptViewerAX". This control contains a buffer overflow vulnerability in its handling of user requests. A specially crafted web page that instantiates this control could trigger this buffer overflow. Successfully exploiting this buffer overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: BusinessObjects confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the affected control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism using CLSID "B20D9D6A-0DEC-4d76-9BEF-175896006B4A".
Description: Multiple F-Secure products have been discovered to have vulnerabilities in their handling of archive files. A specially crafted archive file could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to create a denial-of-service condition. It is thought that at least one of these vulnerabilities could lead to remote code execution, but this is unconfirmed. Note that it may be possible to exploit these vulnerabilities simply by having mail or other files transit a vulnerable system, requiring no interaction. Several proof-of-concept archive files are publicly available.
Status: F-Secure confirmed, updates available.
Description: CUPS is the Common Unix Printing System. It is used to provide printer services on a variety of Unix, Unix-like, and Linux systems and is the default printing system on Mac OS X systems. It contains a flaw in its handling of shared printer management requests. A specially crafted request to the remote management application could trigger a buffer overflow vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Note that this vulnerability is remotely exploitable only on machines sharing printers over the network. Technical details are publicly available via source code analysis.
Status: CUPS confirmed, updates available.
Description: CA BrightStor ARCserv Backup is a popular backup application. Part of its functionality in its Desktops and Laptops edition is provided by an ActiveX control. This control contains a buffer overflow vulnerability in its "AddColumn" method. A specially crafted web page that instantiates this control could trigger this buffer overflow vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. A proof-of-concept for this vulnerability is publicly available.
Status: Vendor has not confirmed, no updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the affected control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism using CLSID "BF6EFFF3-4558-4C4C-ADAF-A87891C5F3A3". Note that this may effect normal application functionality.
Description: Solaris is Sun's UNIX-based operating system. NIS+ is the Network Information Service (formerly known as the "Yellow Pages" service), a service providing distributed system details (such as usernames and passwords) across networks. It was commonly used to share configuration information and authenticate users in the past, but is now used mostly in legacy applications. The 'rpc.ypupdated' daemon provides a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) interface to the NIS+ database. When this daemon is started in "insecure" mode, it fails to properly handle certain requests. A specially crafted request can lead to a new user being added to the NIS+ database, including a user with root privileges. This can allow total compromise of any system running this daemon in insecure mode. This daemon is not run by default. This vulnerability was initially discovered in 1999 and found to affect multiple UNIX operating system vendors. It is unknown if this vulnerability was fixed in past versions of Solaris and then reintroduced, or has been present since its initial discovery on other operating systems. Multiple proofs-of-concept are publicly available.
Status: Sun has not confirmed, no updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by running the affected daemon in "secure" mode.
Part II: Weekly Comprehensive List of Newly Discovered Vulnerabilities Week 12, 2008 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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