This week has two critical Microsoft problems; one critical Firefox problem and one critical ClamAV (anti-virus tool) problem, but what is remarkable about this week is that we are reporting 150 new vulnerabilities. The weekly number hasn't exceeded 100 more than a few times in the last two years. We'll see shortly whether the increase is permanent. Even if not, it is crystal clear that web application programmers are writing a LOT of bad code and their bosses are either ignorant of the problem or negligent in exercising their management authority. 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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TRAINING UPDATE - - SANS CDI in Washington 30 courses; big security tools expo; lots of evening sessions: http://www.sans.org/cdi08/ - - London (12/1- 12/9) http://sans.org/london08/ - - Vancouver (11/17-11/22) http://www.sans.org/vancouver08/ - - Las Vegas (1/24-2/01) http://sans.org/securitywest09/ and in 100 other cites and on line any time: www.sans.org
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1) Come hear about the most valuable research projects in SCADA security today. SANS SCADA Summit - February 2-3 - Orlando http://www.sans.org/info/35279
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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 XML Core Services are a collection of components in various Microsoft products that are used to parse XML content. These components contain multiple vulnerabilities in their handling of a variety of XML content. A specially crafted web page containing XML data could trigger a memory corruption vulnerability leading to remote code execution with the privileges of the current user. Other vulnerabilities could lead to information disclosure or cross site scripting vulnerabilities. Some technical details and a proof-of-concept are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: SMB is the Server Message Block, the protocol used by Microsoft Windows to share files, printers, and other operating system services. SMB is also known as the Common Internet Filesystem (CIFS). The implementation of SMB on Microsoft Windows supports authenticating SMB users and servers via NTLM (an authentication protocol originated on Microsoft Windows NT). Microsoft Windows fails to properly implement the credential protection mechanisms in NTLM. If a user were tricked into accessing a malicious SMB server, that server could then immediately used the provided credentials to access the victim's machine via SMB (an attack known as "credential reflection"). This would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary commands and code with the privileges of the current user. Note that a user must first be convinced to connect to a malicious SMB server. This could be accomplished via a web page or email message. A proof-of-concept for this vulnerability is publicly available. This vulnerability has been publicly known, but not confirmed, since 2003.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Mozilla Firefox contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of a variety of inputs. Flaws in the processing of web pages, script input, URIs, XML documents, JAR files, and other input can lead to a variety of vulnerabilities including arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user. Due to the shared codebase among the various Mozilla products, Mozilla SeaMonkey and Mozilla Thunderbird are also vulnerable to some of these issues. Full technical details for these vulnerabilities are publicly available via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: ClamAV (Clam Anti-Virus) is a popular open source antivirus solution. It is often deployed on mail servers to actively scan email messages for viruses and other malware. It contains a flaw in its processing of Microsoft Visual Basic project files. A specially crafted file 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 vulnerable process. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending an email to a server known to use ClamAV to process email messages. Full technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Apple Aperture is a popular photograph processing application for Apple Mac OS X. Apple iLife is a suite of applications for media management, web publishing, and other tasks for Apple Mac OS X. These applications contain flaws in the processing of a variety of image formats when they are installed on Apple Mac OS X versions 10.4.11 or prior. A specially crafted image 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. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities. Note that images are not opened by the vulnerable applications without prompting by default.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: SAP GUI is a graphical user interface (GUI) to the SAP Enterprise Resource Planning application. Part of its functionality is provided via an ActiveX control. This control contains a remote code execution vulnerability in its handling of input. A malicious web page that instantiated this control could trigger this vulnerability, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.
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 "B01952B0-AF66-11D1-B10D-0060086F6D97". Note that this could 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.
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