Update: Attackers targeting new PowerPoint bug
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(InfoWorld) - One day after patching a widely exploited flawÂ in its Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft Corp. has a new bug to worry about, this time in PowerPoint. Attackers have been exploiting a newly discovered bug in Microsoft's Office presentation software in extremely targeted attacks, McAfee Inc. reported Wednesday. Researchers were made aware of the attacks when a customer submitted two different malicious PowerPoint files, both of which exploited the same vulnerability, said Craig Schmugar, a virus researcher at McAfee. Both files installed malicious remote access Trojan software that then attempted to connect to an outside Web server, he said. Though McAfee is not releasing technical details of the exploit, the security vendor says that it has confirmed that the attack works on three versions of Office running on the Windows 2000 operating system: Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003. Other platforms and other Office applications may also be affected, but McAfee has not yet had time to complete its testing, Schmugar said. Schmugar has blogged about the issueÂ  . Microsoft issued a security advisory on the matter Wednesday, saying that the issue affects users of Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office 2003, and Microsoft Office XP, as well as Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 for Mac. Microsoft's advisory can beÂ found here. As a workaround, Microsoft suggests that users open and view files using PowerPoint Viewer 2003. This software "does not contain the vulnerable code and is not susceptible to this attack," the advisory states. The PowerPoint viewer can beÂ downloaded here. Microsoft and other security vendors, including Symantec Corp. and McAfee, have added signatures to their security products so that they can detect this malicious code. Over the past few months, attackers have focused on Office, exploiting a number of undisclosed Office bugs in extremely targeted attacks, often on government agencies or contractors. These attacks usually take the form of an e-mail that has a malicious Office document attached and is sent to a small number of target victims This latest PowerPoint attack fits that pattern and was sent to a defense contractor, Schmugar said. He declined to provide further details on the intended victim. Because the attack has been extremely limited in scope it is considered to be a low risk for most users, Schmugar said. News of the attack comes the day afterÂ Microsoft issued an emergency patch for a widely exploited bug that affected the VML (Vector Markup Language) rendering engine used by Internet Explorer and Outlook. Hackers are exploiting this critical flaw in the browser via mass e-mail and on thousands of Web sites, security experts said. Microsoft's next set of security patches will be released Oct. 10. The software vendor did not say whether it plans to patch this latest PowerPoint flaw.
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Online portal says bugs could have let attackers alter appearance of pages and access a victim's data.
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InfoWorld - A security researcher has found a security bug that could be attacked in Internet Explorer. Mozilla said it plans to patch the problem in its next Firefox software update.
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Botnet surprise A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe's Acrobat and Reader software which affects Internet Explorer users.â¦
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Latest variant poses a risk to home and small office users.
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Microsoft Corp.  warned about a  new computer virus that exploits a vulnerability in its  PowerPoint presentation software to allow hackers to infiltrate  computer systems.
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Apple has released a security fix for its QuickTime media player software, fixing a critical bug that had been worrying security experts for nearly a month.The update, released Wednesday, fixes a vulnerability in the RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) used by QuickTime to handle streaming media.On Jan. 10, researcher Luigi Auriemma disclosed the flaw by posting proof-of-concept attack code that could be used to run unauthorized software on a victim&#39;s computer. For the attack to work, the criminal would have to first trick the user into viewing a maliciously encoded QuickTime media file.With the attack code available, security researchers had been hoping that Apple would address the flaw. Wednesday&#39;s QuickTime 7.4.1 update is for both the Mac OS X and Windows operating systems.It is Apple&#39;s fifth QuickTime update since October. The company has been forced to issue the flurry of patches as security researchers have taken a closer look at media player flaws during the past year. In December, Apple patched a separate RTSP vulnerability, which online criminals had already started to use in their attacks.&quot;In the past few months, QuickTime has been a prevalent target for security researchers,&quot; said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle Network Security. &quot;Internet media applications on the desktop have been a rich target for attackers, and this trend is sure to continue as most users aren&#39;t yet accustomed to attacks arriving in the form of a viral video.&quot;
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"Limited attacks" are exploiting a previously unknown security bug in Microsoft Word, Microsoft warns.
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A hacker has released attack code that could be used to exploit a critical bug in some versions of the Windows operating system.Microsoft patched the flaw, which affects older versions of Windows, on Oct. 9. When the Image Viewer tries to open a maliciously encoded TIFF file, it can be tricked into running unauthorized software on the PC.A sample of the exploit was posted Monday to the Milw0rm Web site. The code has not yet been used in online attacks, according to Symantec, which issued an alert Monday.Symantec recommends that Windows users install the MS07-055 update as quickly as possible.Microsoft took the unusual step of issuing its own security update for Kodak&#39;s software, because the image viewer (formerly known as the Wang Image Viewer) had shipped in Windows 2000 systems by default.Still, many Windows users are not affected by the problem. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users should not have the software installed on their PCs, unless they downloaded it directly or upgraded from Windows 2000. Windows Vista users are not affected by the bug.Also, users would have to open the TIFF file using the Kodak Image Viewer for the attack to work. Because most PCs are set to automatically open TIFFs using some other piece of software, it is unlikely that an attack would succeed.&quot;Its not a huge deal, though, we don&#39;t think,&quot; said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer with eEye Digital Security, via instant message. &quot;You probably have some other program that defaults to open TIFFs like QuickTime or Photoshop.&quot;The sample attack code affects the Korean language version of Windows, but it could be easily modified to affect other versions of the software, Maiffret said.
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Microsoft Corp has released a patch for its latest âcriticalâ rated security flaw affecting its Windows, Office and developer tools software programmes.
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Adobe Repairs Reader, Acrobat Flaws Information Week
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No end in sight Just when the world thought it was safe to resume use of Microsoft Office, there's word that a new zero-day attack may be targeting the popular productivity package. Like so many of the others, it's capable of all kinds of mischief, including the execution of malicious code on a victim's machine.â¦
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Adobe this week updated its Acrobat and Reader software to fix vulnerabilities spotted by security intelligence firm iDefense. Adobe this week updated its Acrobat and Reader software to fix vulnerabilities
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A vulnerability in Internet Explorer spells potential trouble for Skype users who add or play video in their chats.
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Third-party fix plugs a recently discovered browser flaw that's increasingly being exploited in cyberattacks.
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Security researchers have released attack code that will crash Windows PCs that are susceptible to a recently patched bug in the operating system.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has released its monthly set of security patches, fixing a critical flaw in Office. Attackers could exploit the bug by tricking Office users into opening a maliciously encoded .pub document, which would then allow attackers to run unauthorized software on a victim's PC. These .pub documents are created by Microsoft's Publisher software, an Office component used for designing print and online business publications. The flaw isÂ described here. Microsoft rates the bug as critical for Publisher 2000, but this warning has been downgraded to "important" for the Publisher 2002 and Publisher 2003 products. Some security experts expected Microsoft toÂ fix a similar bug in Word, which has been used by online attackers over the past few weeks, but that problem remains unfixed. Microsoft acknowledged the Word problem last week and probably did not have time to run a fix through its quality assurance tests, said Jonathan Bitle, a manager of technical accounts with Qualys Inc. "It's really late in their engineering cycle, so it's understandable that they wouldn't manage to get something out," he said. Both the Word and Publisher bugs rely on the same type of attack to work: an attacker e-mails a malicious document and somehow tricks the victim into clicking on the attachment. Security experts have been seeing more of these Office flaws exploited of late. "This is one of the trends that we have observed," said Amol Sarwate, director of the Qualys vulnerability research lab. "The growing number of client-side vulnerabilities where you have a malformed Publisher file or Word file or Excel file." Tuesday's patches also include less-critical fixes for two Windows components: the PGM (Pragmatic General Multicast) protocol used by Microsoft's Reliable Multicast Program software to transfer data, and the Windows Indexing service, which is used by the operating system's search engine. Microsoft's security bulletins offer more information. September may seem likeÂ a bit of a reprieve for harried system administrators who were given 19 updates to test and deploy over the past two months. Microsoft was forced toÂ reissue one of its August patches after it caused Internet Explorer to crash when working with a Web-based enterprise applications such as PeopleSoft and Siebel. But before Microsoft patchers get too relaxed, they should brace for the possibility of another patch later this month, Qualys said. Because attackers are actively exploiting the Word problem, Sarwate believes that Microsoft may issue an "out-of-cycle" patch for the problem, ahead of its next scheduled security updates, which are due Oct. 10. Â