Firefox and Thunderbird and Apple Mac Java plug in and Sun Java Runtime all had critical vulnerabilities reported this week. 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: Several Mozilla products, including the popular Mozilla web browser, contain multiple vulnerabilities in their handling of a variety of inputs. Flaws in the handling of URLs, JavaScript, image files, and other input can lead to vulnerabilities ranging in severity from remote code execution to information disclosure and denials-of-service. Technical details are available for some of these vulnerabilities, and further technical details could be obtained via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Java Runtime Environment installed by default on Apple Mac OS X contains multiple vulnerabilities. A flaw in the handling of "file://" URLs by Java applets could allow an applet to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the current user. Additionally, a flaw in the handling of Hash-based Message Authentication Codes (HMACs), used to validate applet origin, could lead to a memory corruption vulnerability. Successfully exploiting this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. It is believed that these vulnerabilities are distinct from the vulnerabilities in the Sun Java Runtime Environment discussed below.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Sun Java Runtime Environment is the standard implementation of the Java Platform Runtime Environment. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of scripting in applets. A specially crafted applet could exploit one of these vulnerabilities to escalate its privileges. This would allow the applet to access the vulnerable system with the privileges of the current user. Additional vulnerabilities would allow one applet to interact with another, potentially unrelated, applet. The Sun Java Runtime Environment is installed by default on all Apple Mac OS X systems, Sun Solaris systems, most Unix and Linux-based operating systems, and is commonly installed on Microsoft Windows. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities. Note that applets are often executed immeditely upon receipt, without first prompting the user.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. Note that this update includes fixes for other, previously-discussed vulnerabilities that were addressed in earlier hotfixes.
Description: Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) is Cisco's operating system for most of its routing and switching products. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of a variety of network protocols. A specially crafted request in any one of these protocols could result in a denial-of-service condition. This condition may affect a subsystem on the affected device, or the entire device. In some cases, technical details are publicly available. Affected protocols include Protocol Independent Multicast, Cisco IPC, Session Initiation Protocol, Multiprotocol Label Switching, Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol, Secure Sockets Layer, DNS, and other protocols. Additionally, the Cisco uBR10012 Router contains a default configuration weakness; a default Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) community configuration. This vulnerability could be leveraged to take complete control of the vulnerable device.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. Users are advised to disable unnecessary protocol processing if possible.
Description: FLEXnet Connect is a component used by the Macromedia InstallShield installation suite. It contains a buffer overflow in its handling of certain input. A specially crafted web page that instantiated 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: 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 "E9880553-B8A7-4960-A668-95C68BED571E".
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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