Update: Microsoft patches new Office flaw
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft 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. Although Publisher is the application being patched, Office users should also be mindful of the issue because Publisher is part of the Office Professional Edition suite, said Christopher Budd, a program manager with Microsoft's Security Response Center. 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 but was unable to run a fix through its quality assurance tests in time for September's updates, according to Budd. "It was just not feasible from an engineering standpoint ... to get the quality testing in," 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 Inc. 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 like aÂ bit of a reprieveÂ 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 patchesÂ 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. That prospect seems unlikely, however. Microsoft's Budd characterized the Word attacks as "very limited in terms of scope," saying, "at this point in time, we've not made any determination to do anything out-of-cycle."
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Software patches include critical fixes for bugs in Microsoft Office and the scanning engine used by the company's security products.
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SEPTEMBER 14, 2004 (REUTERS) - Microsoft Corp. today released a patch for its latest &quot;critical&quot; security flaw affecting how Windows, Office and developer tools software process images in the JPEG image format.
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Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday issued a trio of software updates to fix security holes in Windows computers, including one flaw that hackers are using to infiltrate PCs equipped with a massive security upgrade the company released just five months ago.
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Double trouble Microsoft has warned of another unpatched vulnerability in Word. The unspecified code execution flaw means hackers can load malware onto targeted machines providing users are tricked into opening maliciously constructed Word files.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's Word and Office programs have been targeted again, with the company warning that hackers may already exploiting a new vulnerability found in the applications. The warning comes just afterÂ the company issued fixesÂ for 20 other bugs in its products on Tuesday, including six for Word. The latest problem affects Office 2000 and Office XP, Microsoft said in a security advisory on Wednesday. An attacker could create a specially-crafted Word document that, if opened, could allow them to control a victim's computer remotely. As usual it advised great caution when opening unsolicited attachments. Microsoft said it had received reports of "very limited, targeted" attacks. Danish security vendor SecuniaÂ ranked the problem as "extremely critical." The emergence of a security bug so soon after Microsoft's scheduled patch release follows a familiar pattern by hackers, who want to maximize the amount of time they have to take advantage of a vulnerability, said Thomas Kristensen, Secunia's chief technical officer. Microsoft rarely diverts from its patch schedule, set for the second Tuesday of the month, although it said it would in this case if it considers it necessary. Office applications such as Word are "low-hanging fruit" for hackers, since the programs haven't been audited as much as some others, such as Internet Explorer, Kristensen said. The hackers find a vulnerability by manipulating a document and testing how Word reads it. In this case, a modified document can corrupt system memory in a way that allows the attacker to execute code on the machine remotely. As well as sending the document via email, the hacker could embed it in a Web page and try to lure users into visiting that page. "Attacking using this vector is fairly easy," Kristensen said. However, new security features in Windows Vista, released to the general public last month, may prevent similar types of attack, so hackers may be making an extra effort to exploit them while they can, he said. Â
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The new flaw is unrelated to the help-file flaws discovered by a Chinese security company last week. Microsoft took the Chinese security group to task for disclosing the vulnerability without giving the company a chance to develop a fix.
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Microsoft advised users of its Mac version of Microsoft Office that a security patch inadvertently issued through its software update service was not ready for release. It advised those that may have applied the patch to uninstall the update.
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Eleven security updates are released today that fix a number of critical flaws in Microsoft products, including Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer.
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(InfoWorld) - There's now one more reason to be careful about opening Microsoft Office attachments. Microsoft warned Tuesday of a new, unpatched memory corruption error in its word-processing software, and said that it was investigating reports of "limited" attacks that exploit the problem. The bug can be exploited by adding a string of characters in a Word file that can corrupt the PC's memory and allow the attacker to run unauthorized software on the system, Microsoft wrote in a security advisory . The bug affects many versions of the software, including Word 2000, 2002, and 2003, the Word Viewer 2003 and several versions of Microsoft Works. It is rated 'critical' by the FrSIRT Web site, which compiles a list of software vulnerabilities. As automatic security updates have become commonplace, attackers have focused more on developing attacks that leverage this kind of unpatched hole in the software, sometimes called 0day attacks. This trend has forced Microsoft to produce a growing number of software updates in recent months. In particular, hackers turned their attention to Microsoft's Office products, which some researchers consider to be a more fruitful source of bugs than the Windows operating system. "Cyber criminals know that 0days are very vulnerable and can be used to make lots of money," said Cesar Cerrudo, chief executive officer of security research firm Argeniss, in Parana, Argentina. These vulnerabilities can be exploited to install spyware or dangerous Trojan horse programs, or to add the victim's computer to a network of compromised PCs, called a botnet, which can then be used to send out spam or attack other systems, he said. Microsoft's next set of security updates is due to be released on December 12.
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Blog: Patches include the Firefox portion of the IE-Firefox flaw identified last week.
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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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PDF attack prompts round-the-clock patch fest Escalating attacks exploiting a serious weakness in PDF files have prompted Microsoft to issue an all-hands-on-deck call to fix a vulnerability that lurks in the bowels of Windows XP.â¦
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Acknowledging that its patching process has "not been an example of our best work," Microsoft this week issued a second update to security bulletin MS06-042, which was released in August. The original patch included a security vulnerability - and it turns out the fix introduced even more.
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Although Microsoft had planned to release a patch today for a OneCare flaw that eats Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail files, user complaints prompted it to actually put out the fix on Sunday.
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(InfoWorld) - With its February security patches now two weeks away, Microsoft is warning of another critical flaw in its Office software. This time Excel is the target. Microsoft confirmed late Friday that its spreadsheet software is vulnerable to a new attack, and said that the problem may affect other Office software as well. The software giant is investigating reports that the flaw is being used by criminals in "very limited," attacks, according to a Microsoft security advisory. This latest flaw affects Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003, and Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac. Over the past year hackers have increasingly focused on Office applications as a security hole and the attacks based on these flaws are often the same: Criminals send an e-mail that appears legitimate, and trick unsuspecting users into opening a maliciously encoded document. Once the document is opened, attackers are able to install unauthorized software on the victim's system. Microsoft may not have time to patch the Excel flaw in time for its next set of security updates, expected Feb. 13, but, no doubt, it has other Office patches in the works. Over the past few months four similarly critical flaws have been reported in Microsoft Word. None of these has yet been patched.
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Microsoft on Tuesday issued a patch for an earlier discovered flaw in Visual Studio 2005, while yet another cumulative patch for Internet Explorer was released, as well as one for a vulnerability within the Windows Media Format.