This was the worst week of 2008: Two unpatched Microsoft zero-days, the big DNS problem/patch, and remote code execution bugs in Novell eDirectory and Sun's JRE. 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 Access component of Microsoft Office provides some of its functionality through an ActiveX control. This control contains a flaw in its handling of user input. A malicious web page that instantiated this control could trigger this flaw. Successfully exploiting this flaw would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Proof-of-concept code for this vulnerability is publicly available, and it is believed that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, no updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the affected control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism using CLSIDs "F0E42D50-368C-11D0-AD81-00A0C90DC8D9", "F0E42D60-368C-11D0-AD81-00A0C90DC8D9", and "F2175210-368C-11D0-AD81-00A0C90DC8D9".
Description: Microsoft Word contains a remote code execution vulnerability in its handling of documents. A specially crafted document could trigger this vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. While no technical details appear to be available, this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. Note that Microsoft Office 2002 will not open Word documents upon receipt without first prompting the user.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, no updates available.
Description: The Domain Name System (DNS) is the service that provides symbolic name to IP address resolution for the internet. Part of the DNS protocol's design includes a Transaction ID (XID) number to match queries with responses. If an attacker were able to predict certain characteristics of a DNS query, including XID, source UDP port, and other characteristics, the attacker could spoof responses from a DNS server. Recently, several vendors' implementations of DNS were discovered to be particularly vulnerable to such spoofing due to flaws in their XID randomization algorithms. Major DNS server vendors coordinated patching to ensure that all major systems would have patches available simultaneously. While full technical details for these vulnerabilities is not currently available, they could be discerned through source code analysis. Further details are scheduled to be revealed at this year's Black Hat security conference. If an attacker were able to successfully spoof DNS responses, an attacker could redirect users to malicious web sites or mail servers, or poison DNS caches on victim's systems.
Status: Vendors confirmed, updates available.
Description: eDirectory is Novell's implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). It contains an integer overflow in its handling of certain user inputs. A specially crafted user input could trigger this integer overflow. Successfully exploiting this overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Sun's implementation of the Java Runtime Environment contains multiple vulnerabilities. A specially crafted Java application or applet could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, with consequences ranging from arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user to denials-of-service and information disclosure. Note that, depending upon configuration, Java applets embedded in web pages may be opened automatically upon the loading of the page. Some technical details for these vulnerabilities may be available via source code analysis. Sun's Java Runtime Environment is installed by default on all Apple Mac OS X systems, all Sun Solaris systems, many other Unix and Linux based operating systems, and is often installed on Microsoft Windows. Note that some of these vulnerabilities were discussed individually in previous editions of @RISK.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Windows allows users to save filesystem search criteria, so that these criteria can be used later to repeat the given search. A flaw in the saving of searches can trigger a remote code execution vulnerability. A specially crafted saved search file could trigger this vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that significant user interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability: a user must open a malicious save file and subsequently save it again.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft SQL Server contains a remote code execution vulnerability. When parsing a stored backup file, an integer underflow flaw can be triggered. Successfully exploiting this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. Note that an attacker must have authenticated access to the vulnerable database; such authentication may potentially be obtained through SQL injection vulnerabilities in applications using the vulnerable database server. Additionally, an attacker would need to be able to provide a malicious backup file to the vulnerable server.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Outlook Web Access, the web-based mail client provided by Microsoft Exchange, contains multiple cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. A specially crafted email could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, allowing an attacker to inject arbitrary web-based scripts into a victim's browser session upon opening a malicious email. Note that Outlook Web Access Premium is not affected by these vulnerabilities.
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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