Another critical Excel vulnerability (unpatched) this week will enable another wave of successful spear phishing attacks (with email attachments that people think are being checked by their virus checker, when the virus checkers may be impotent against these new attacks). Add another series of critical Apple QuickTime vulnerabilities, a critical Citrix vulnerability and a critical vulnerability in Cisco Unified Communications Manager's handling of cryptographic certificates, and you have another bad week for the defenders.
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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http://www.sans.org/info/22614
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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: Microsoft Excel contains a flaw in its handling of certain Excel files. A specially crafted Excel file could trigger an unspecified vulnerability in Excel, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, on recent versions of Microsoft Office, content is not opened upon receipt without user interaction. Further technical details are not publicly available for this vulnerability, but this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.
Status: Microsoft confirmed, no updates available.
Description: QuickTime is Apple's streaming media framework for Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. QuickTime contains multiple vulnerabilities in the handling of various file formats. A specially crafted QuickTime video, image file or stream could trigger one of these vulnerabilities and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. QuickTime content is generally displayed automatically upon receipt, without further user intervention. Note that QuickTime is installed by default on all Apple Mac OS X systems, and is also installed as part of Apple's iTunes product on Microsoft Windows systems. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities
Status: Apple confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Citrix Presentation Server is an application sharing system. It contains a flaw in its Independent Management Architecture (IMA) component. A specially crafted user request could trigger a buffer overflow during the request's processing. Successfully exploiting this buffer overflow would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (usually SYSTEM). Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Citrix confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by blocking access to TCP ports 2512 and 2513 at the network perimeter, if possible.
Description: Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) is Cisco's telephony management platform. It contains a flaw in its "CTLProvider" component. This component manages cryptographic certificates. A specially crafted request to this component could trigger a heap overflow. Successfully exploiting this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process. No authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability. Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability. Note that successfully exploiting this vulnerability could lead to a disruption in telephony service, including emergency services.
Status: Cisco confirmed, updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by blocking access to TCP port 2444 at the network perimeter, if possible.
Description: TIBCO SmartSockets is a suite of enterprise messaging and communications applications and libraries. These applications, and potentially applications that are built using these libraries, are contain multiple vulnerabilities in their handling of various user requests. A specially crafted request could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, leading to a buffer overflow or memory corruption condition. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process (often SYSTEM). Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: TIBCO confirmed, updates available.
Description: Crystal Reports is a popular enterprise report generation application. It provides remote users the capability of viewing generated reports via a web browser. This functionality is provided by an ActiveX control. This control contains a buffer overflow in its "SelectedSession" method. A specially crafted web page that instantiates 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. Complete technical details and a proof-of-concept are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor has not confirmed, no updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the affected control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism using CLSID "3D58C9F3-7CA5-4C44-9D62-C5B63E059050"
Description: Macrovision FLEXNet Connect allows software distributors and vendors the ability to automatically deliver software and notify users of updates. Part of its functionality is provided by an ActiveX control. This control contains multiple insecure methods. A malicious webpage that instantiated this control could use its "AddFile" or "DownloadAndExecute" methods to automatically download and execute arbitrary files to a victim's system. This could be leveraged to overwrite sensitive files or execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Multiple proofs-of-concept and full technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor has not confirmed, no updates available. Users can mitigate the impact of this vulnerability by disabling the affected control via Microsoft's "kill bit" mechanism for CLSIDs "1DF951B1-8D40-4894-A04C-66AD824A0EEF" and "FCED4482-7CCB-4E6F-86C9-DCB22B52843C".
Description: AOL Nullsoft Winamp is a popular media player for Microsoft Windows. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of Ultravox media streams. A specially crafted stream could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, leading to a buffer overflow. Successfully exploiting one of these buffer overflows would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that Ultravox streams may open without user intervention upon receipt, depending on system configuration. Some technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: AOL confirmed, updates available.
Description: Skype is a popular cross platform voice and video conferencing system. It allows users the ability to add video and other web content to chat sessions. The web content added to these sessions runs with full Microsoft Internet Explorer "local zone" privileges on Microsoft Windows. This allows attackers to execute arbitrary scripts with the privileges of the current user. This can be leveraged to full arbitrary command and code execution. A proof-of-concept and video demonstration of this vulnerability is publicly available. Note that this vulnerability depends on the presence of cross site scripting vulnerabilities in associated web sites.
Status: Skype has released a temporary fix for this vulnerability.
Description: Microsoft Visual Basic contains a flaw in its handling of DSR files. DSR files are used to define form data and other information In Visual Basic applications. A specially crafted DSR file could trigger a buffer overflow in Visual Basic, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that DSR files may be opened without user interaction upon receipt, depending upon configuration. A proof-of-concept for this vulnerability is publicly available.
Status: Microsoft has not confirmed, no updates available.
Description: Oracle has released its Critical Patch Update (CPU) for January of 2008. This update addresses several flaws in various Oracle products. The various vulnerabilities are of unspecified severity and impact, though it is believed that at least some of them can lead to remote code execution with the privileges of the vulnerable process. No further details are publicly available for these issues. Some vendors who ship products based on Oracle products have also issued advisories.
Status: Oracle confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Apple iPhone contains multiple vulnerabilities in its embedded web browser based on Safari, known as Mobile Safari. A specially crafted URL passed to the application could trigger a memory corruption vulnerability and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the iPhone. Additionally, Mobile Safari fails to properly handle cross-domain scripting issues, exposing users to a Cross-Site Scripting attack. No other technical details are believed to be publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Apple 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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