Two types of critical vulnerabilities this week: Those that can be exploited by viewing web sites and those that can be exploited by opening Word, Excel or PowerPoint files. This pattern of vulnerabilities closely matches the pattern techniques being used in cyber espionage. 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 Microsoft Color Management System (CMS) is a component of the Windows operating system that parses International Color Consortium (ICC) color profiles in image files that are used to ensure consistent color across displays and platforms. It contains a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in its parsing of this profile information. A specially crafted image file embedded in a web page or other document or otherwise opened by a user 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 these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Internet Explorer contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of HTML objects. A specially crafted web page could trigger one of these vulnerabilities using specially crafted HTML or scripts. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Some technical details are publicly available for some of these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Access component of Microsoft Office provides some of its functionality via 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. This vulnerability was disclosed prior to the Microsoft advisory and was discussed in a previous edition of @RISK.
Status: Vendor confirmed, 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". Note that this may affect normal application functionality.
Description: Microsoft Excel contains multiple vulnerabilities in its parsing of Excel documents. A specially crafted Excel file could trigger one of these vulnerabilities. Successfully exploiting these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user or gain access to otherwise secure remote data sources. Note that, on recent versions of Microsoft Office, documents are not opened upon receipt without first prompting the user. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft PowerPoint contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of PowerPoint files. A specially crafted PowerPoint file could trigger one of these vulnerabilities. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, on recent versions of Microsoft Office, documents are not opened upon receipt without first prompting the user. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Office provides various filters - software that can transparently convert various files among various formats. Several of these filters contain flaws in their parsing of various file formats. A specially crafted document could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, on recent versions of Microsoft Office, documents are not opened upon receipt without first prompting the user. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Word contains a memory corruption vulnerability in its parsing of Word documents. A specially crafted document could trigger this 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 Office, documents are not opened upon receipt without first prompting the user. This vulnerability was previously discussed in a previous version of @RISK. It is believed that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild, and exploit code is available to subscribers to the CORE Impact product.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Microsoft Windows Event System (ES) is a component of the Microsoft Windows operating system that manages method calls, events and subscriptions to events for user applications. It contains two vulnerabilities in its handling of user requests. A specially crafted user request could trigger one of these vulnerabilities to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable subsystem. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities. Note that an attacker would require authentication to exploit these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: WebEx is a popular conferencing tool. Part of its functionality is provided through a "meeting manager" ActiveX control. This control contains a vulnerability in its handling of arguments passed to its "NewObject" method. A specially crafted web page that instantiates this control could trigger this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. A proof-of-concept for this vulnerability is publicly available.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the affected control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism, using CLSID "32E26FD9-F435-4A20-A561- 35D4B987CFDC". Note that this could affect normal application functionality.
Description: BitTorrent is a popular file distribution system. A given "torrent" (shared file) is described using a ".torrent" file. The BitTorrent and uTorrecnt clients contain a flaw in their parsing of the "created by" field of these files. A specially crafted .torrent file could trigger this vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that .torrent files are often opened automatically, without first prompting the user. Full technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Maxthon is the second most popular web browser in China . It contains a flaw in its handling of the HTTP "Content-type" header. A specially crafted header sent by a malicious server could trigger this flaw, leading to a buffer overflow. Successfully exploiting this buffer overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Full technical details and a proof-of- concept are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Microsoft Windows Messenger is Microsoft Windows's built-in instant messaging and conferencing client. Part of its functionality is provided by an ActiveX control. This control contains an information disclosure vulnerability. A malicious web page that instantiates this control could access arbitrary information with the privileges of the current user, including that user's Windows Messenger authentication credentials. Successfully stealing these credentials would allow an attacker to log in to messaging services as the victim.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the affected control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism using CLSID "B69003B3-C55E-4b48-836C- BC5946FC3B28". Note that this may affect normal application functionality.
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.
(c) 2008. 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.
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