Thunderbird, Firefox and Apple Macs are the products with critical vulnerabilities this week. Also notice the number of new vulnerabilities in new web applications. Thousands more vulnerable applications are going live every week on corporate web sites. Many security people are completely shirking their responsibility by claiming this is a programming problem and then not creating the opportunity for the programmers to master secure coding. When the attacks come, the bosses will ask why they never used the free assessments to show the programmers where their knowledge gaps were and then the course to help the programmers fill those gaps. There won't be a career-enhancing good answer. 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 2009 in Orlando in early march - the largest security training conference and expo in the world. lots of evening sessions: http://www.sans.org/ - - SANS Security West Las Vegas (1/24-2/01) http://sans.org/securitywest09/ - - Looking for training in your own Community? http://sans.org/community/ For a list of all upcoming events, on-line and live: www.sans.org
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Join professionals to learn about Log Management tools at the Log Management Summit April 6-7. http://www.sans.org/info/36644
2) Ensure that your VMware ESX hosts are secure and compliant using free Compliance Checker from Configuresoft. http://www.sans.org/info/36649
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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: Apple Mac OS X contains multiple vulnerabilities. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to create a variety of exploit conditions. Most severely, a specially crafted CPIO archive file or image file could result in remote code execution with the privileges of the current user. Other vulnerabilities in various operating system functions could render applications using those functions vulnerable to arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities in they pass remote user input directly into a vulnerable function. Various other vulnerabilities are addressed in this update, as well as updates to included third-party applications.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Products based on the Mozilla codebase, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser, contain multiple vulnerabilities in their handing of a variety of inputs. A specially crafted web page or script could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, leading to a variety of exploit conditions. Most severely, a specially crafted web page could result in arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user, or execution of arbitrary JavaScript code with elevated privileges. Technical details for these vulnerabilities is publicly available via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Adobe Flash Player, the most common rich media player on the web, contains a flaw in its parsing of Flash files. A specially crafted Flash file could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Flash content is generally downloaded and played without first prompting the user. Few technical details are publicly available for this vulnerability. The Adobe Flash Player is installed by default on numerous Linux distributions. Reportedly, only the Linux version of the Adobe Flash Player is vulnerable.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Opera is a popular cross platform web browser. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of a variety of inputs. A specially crafted web page or script viewed using Opera could trigger one of these vulnerabilities. Exploiting one of these vulnerabilities could result in a variety of exploit conditions, including remote code execution with the privileges of the current user. Some technical details are publicly available for 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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