This week's news: A critical vulnerability in Microsoft PowerPoint and numerous critical vulnerabilities in Apple Mac OS/X and Safari all can lead to remote execution (making systems into zombies).
@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: Multiple Microsoft products have flaws in their handling of Microsoft PowerPoint files. A specially crafted PowerPoint file could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, leading to a variety of exploit conditions. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. On older versions or special configurations of these products, malicious files may be opened upon receipt without first prompting the user. Some technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Apple Mac OS X contains multiple vulnerabilities in a variety of subsystems. Specially crafted input or data handled by one of these components could trigger a vulnerability, leading to a variety of exploitable conditions. Numerous vulnerabilities are present that could be leveraged to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user or vulnerable process. Technical details are publicly available for some of these vulnerabilities.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: Safari is Apple's web browser for Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of a variety of web page and scripting constructs. A specially crafted web page or script could trigger one of these vulnerabilities, leading to a variety of exploitable conditions. Successfully exploiting one of these vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. As portions of Safari are open source, full technical details for these vulnerabilities are publicly available via source code analysis.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available.
Description: SquirrelMail is a popular open source web mail application for a variety of operating systems. It contains multiple vulnerabilities in its handling of a variety of inputs. Malicious emails could exploit these flaws to perform cross-site scripting and session fixation attacks. Additionally, in non default configurations, users could exploit a vulnerability allowing them to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the web browser process. Note that authentication would be required to exploit the server-side vulnerability. Full technical details are publicly available for these vulnerabilities via source code analysis.
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.
(c) 2009. 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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