If you were wondering how people's PCs get infected (actually) look no further than the PDF (Adobe Reader) flaw. PDF documents may get opened without prompting the user. Then they take over the system. Also two new remote code execution flaws in Apple Safari. 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: Acrobat and Reader are Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) viewers. They contain a flaw in their handling of certain JavaScript constructs. A PDF document containing embedded JavaScript could trigger this flaw, creating a buffer overflow condition. Successfully exploiting this buffer overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, depending upon configuration, PDF documents may be opened by the vulnerable applications upon receipt without first prompting the user. Reports indicate that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Safari, Apple's web browser for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of a variety of inputs. Two vulnerabilities can result in remote code execution. The first of these has to do with a logic flaw in Safari's handling of user preferences. Safari reads part of its configuration from Microsoft Internet Explorer's configuration; certain combinations of these settings can result in automatic execution of downloaded files. Note that Safari is not vulnerable in the default configuration for sites not in Internet Explorer's "Local" zone. Additionally, a buffer overflow exists in Safari's handling of JavaScript arrays. A specially crafted JavaScript script could trigger this overflow, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that technical details of this vulnerability may be publicly available via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. Note that only Safari for Microsoft Windows is affected.
Description: Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) is a document presentation system. It is widely used with IBM products. The AFP Viewer Plugin allows users to view AFP documents from a web browser. This plugin contains a buffer overflow vulnerability in its handling of certain inputs. A specially crafted web page that uses this plugin could trigger this vulnerability. Successfully exploiting this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Technical details for this vulnerability are publicly available.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Ruby is a popular scripting and programming language. It contains multiple flaws in certain functions. If these functions are used to process user input, an attacker could trigger one of these flaws. Successfully exploiting one of these flaws would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Note that technical details for these vulnerabilities is available via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor 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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