Problems with Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer and Adobe Flash will catch your attention in this week's @RISK, but there are also critical vulnerabilities in the Autonomy KeyView SDK, a library used by a large number of applications, including Symantec Mail Security, Lotus Notes, and activePDF. 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 GDI is the Graphics Device Interface, the portion of the Microsoft Windows operating system that handles graphical operations on behalf of applications. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in various methods. These methods can be accessed in a variety of ways, but are vulnerable to remote attacks due to the way they parse Windows Metafile (WMF) and Enhanced Metafile (EMF) files. These files are commonly used as graphics file formats. A specially crafted WMF or EMF file could trigger one of the GDI vulnerabilities. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Depending upon configuration, WMF and EMF files may be opened upon receipt without first prompting the user. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Internet Explorer allows websites to encode scripts embedded in web pages, to help prevent copying and modification of such scripts. A flaw in the decoding process leads to a remote code execution vulnerability. A specially crafted web page could trigger this flaw, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that such scripts would be executed automatically upon viewing a malicious web page, and may not be visible to the user. Note that a vulnerability is available to members of Immunity Security's early update program.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available. Systems using Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7 are not vulnerable.
Description: Adobe Flash is the most popular rich content system for web browsers. Its Player component, used to display such content, contains multiple vulnerabilities. A specially crafted Flash file could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, with consequences ranging from arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user to cross-site-scripting and other vulnerabilities. Flash content is normally displayed without first prompting the user. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities. Note that Adobe Flash Player is distributed by default with Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and many Unix, Unix-like, and Linux operating system distributions.
Status: Adobe confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Autonomy and Verity KeyView Software Developer Kits (SDKs) are used by a variety of applications to automatically parse and display various types of media. These SDKs contain multiple buffer overflows in their handling of a variety of media types. A specially crafted HTML, graphics, folio, or email file could trigger one of these buffer overflows and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Numerous applications use the affected SDKs, including applications such as IBM Lotus Notes, activePDF DocConverter, and Symantec Mail Security. Technical details are publicly available for several of these vulnerabilities. In the case of several vulnerable products, no user interaction is required to exploit these vulnerabilities; an email message transiting a vulnerable server is sufficient for exploitation.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Internet Explorer contains a flaw in its handling of data streams. A specially crafted web page that is designed to exploit this vulnerability could trigger this flaw, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. It is believed that the method of exploitation would not first prompt the user before triggering the vulnerability. Few technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Project is a popular project management application. It contains a flaw in its handling of Project files. A specially crafted Project file could trigger this flaw, leading to a memory corruption vulnerability. Successfully exploiting this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, on recent versions of Microsoft Project, Project files are not opened without first prompting the user by default.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Windows contains an ActiveX control known as 'hxvz.dll'. When this control is instantiated by Microsoft Internet Explorer, it can cause a memory corruption vulnerability. A malicious web page that instantiates this control could trigger this vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that this update also disables some third-party ActiveX controls that are known to contain vulnerabilities.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the affected control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism using CLSIDs "314111b8-a502-11d2-bbca-00c04f8ec294" and "314111c6-a502-11d2-bbca-00c04f8ec294".
Description: The TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is an enterprise inter-application message-passing service. TIBCO Rendezvous is an enterprise process coordination system. These products contain multiple vulnerabilities in their handling of a variety of messages. A specially crafted message sent to or via these services could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, potentially allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. On some installations of these applications, this could result in arbitrary code execution with SYSTEM or root privileges.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Domain Name System (DNS) is the system by which human-readable domain names are resolved into IP addresses. DNS requests are paired with responses by using a unique "transaction ID" per request-response pair. Microsoft Windows fails to create truly random transaction IDs for DNS requests and responses. An attacker who could observe several requests from a Microsoft Windows system could predict subsequent transaction IDs. This would allow an attacker to spoof responses from a DNS server, possibly redirecting vulnerable machines to arbitrary sites or otherwise disrupting normal DNS resolution. Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Visio contains flaws in its handling of various file formats. A specially crafted Viso or DXF file could trigger one of these flaws, leading to various 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 some user interaction is required to exploit these vulnerabilities. In the case of DXF files, Visio must be explicitly instructed to open the file; it will not be opened by Visio automatically in its default configuration.
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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