Web Servers Lead Top 20 Security Problems List
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The SANS Institute has issued its latest list of the 20 most critical Internet security vulnerabilties. Web servers top the list for Windows-based systems and fall second on the list of Unix and Linux systems.
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Secunia has found that the number of security bugs in the open source Red Hat Linux operating system and Firefox browsers far outstripped comparable products from Microsoft last year.In a report released this week, Secunia also criticized CA for the quality of the code in its anti-virus products, saying that "inherent" code problems are exposing CA products to ongoing security vulnerabilities.On the other hand, "zero-day" security bugs in Firefox were patched more quickly than in Microsoft Internet Explorer, according to the Secunia 2007 Report, released this week.In a review of the number of vulnerabilities found in enterprise anti-virus vendors' products, Secunia found that CA was by far the leader, with 187 vulnerabilities, followed by Symantec with 73. Trend Micro (34), ClamAV (15), McAfee (13) and F-Secure (6) ranked lower on the list.The high figures for Symantec and CA are partly due to their wide range of products, some of which cover areas other than anti-virus, Secunia said.However, the majority of the CA bugs were due to "inherent code problems with some CA products", Secunia said in the report.Of particular concern is CA's range of ARCServe Backup products for laptops and desktops, which Secunia submitted to its Binary Analysis process after several bugs were reported and fixed. The bugs involved errors in processing particular arguments and requests.The analysis found that about 60 reported bugs were still present in the supposedly patched versions.What's more, the analysis found that the vulnerabilities were partly due to "the nature of the product code itself", Secunia said."Unless an overhaul of the code is undertaken, then the product remains susceptible to similar types of vulnerabilities," Secunia said.However CA said in a statement that it has rigorous quality-control measures in place for its software and continues to improve those measures.A number of the vulnerabilities found in Symantec products were due to their use of vulnerable software from third-party developers, Secunia said.One of these is the Autonomy Keyview SDK (software development kit), used in Symantec Mail to view Lotus 1-2-3 files. The component was reported to have a "highly critical" flaw on 12 December, but hasn't yet been patched, leaving some Symantec products vulnerable.Symantec said in a statement that it has published instructions for mitigating the problem and has issued product updates for some affected vendors. IBM, whose Lotus Notes was also affected by the Autonomy bug, has issued its own patch.Operating systems and browsersOut of the operating systems monitored by Secunia -- Windows (98 and onwards), Mac OS X, HP-UX 10.x and 11.x, Solaris 8, 9, and 10 and Red Hat (excluding Fedora) -- Red Hat was found to have by far the most vulnerabilities, at 633, with 99 percent found in third-party components. (Linux distributions are generally composed mostly of third-party software, which is integrated by the distributor.)Red Hat has taken issue with the figures, claiming the accurate number should be 404 vulnerabilities for last year.Solaris came next, with 252 bugs, 80 percent of which were in third-party components. Mac OS X came after that with 235, 62 percent of which were third-party.Windows had only 123 bugs reported, but 96 percent of those were found in the operating system itself. HP-UX had 75 bugs reported, 81 percent of which were in third-party code.Last week, a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bug-fixing scheme uncovered an average of one security glitch per 1,000 lines of code in 180 widely used open source software projects.The large number of Red Hat flaws is partly due to the large number and wide variety of components it includes."Red Hat contains two different browsers and graphic interfaces, a number of PDF readers and image editors, and so on," the report said. "Red Hat, HP-UX, and Solaris can easily be used as servers, and as such include and support a large number of third party components, while the same cannot be said of all versions of Windows and Mac OS X."Any consideration of relative OS security should look at factors not covered by the report, such as average patching time for vulnerabilities, Secunia said.In the browser field, Firefox led the way with 64 bugs, compared to 43 for Internet Explorer, and 14 each for Opera and Safari.However, in an examination of zero-day flaws - reported by third parties before a patch was available - Secunia found that Firefox tended to get more patches, sooner, compared to IE.Out of eight zero-day bugs reported for Firefox in 2007, five have been patched, three of those in just over a week. Out of 10 zero-day IE bugs, only three were patched and the shortest patch time was 85 days.ActiveX was hit by the largest number of browser add-on bugs in 2007, with 339 (compared to 45 last year), Secunia said.The figure was propped up by the Month of ActiveX Controls Bugs in May 2007, and by Secunia's discovery of a vulnerable ActiveX component that was used in 40 different products.QuickTime followed with 35 bugs and Java with 21 bugs.
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Ilia Alshanetsky posts today about the proposed "Month of PHP bugs" that Stefan Esser is proposing:   It would be interesting to see what issues he discovers, hopefully most of them have already been reported to the PHP Security Team, in which case the upcoming 5.2.1 release will provide a resolution path for affected users.   Hopefully, as Ilia states, the bugs will not turn out to be zero-day vulnerabilities and will instead be smaller issues. Either way, a bug-fix patch will probably soon follow.   Either way, I have to look at this as a free security audit of PHP by someone with a clue about security and ultimately, in the long run it will only make PHP better, even if March is going to be rather busy.
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The FrSIRT site has posted a new advisory for users of the Vivvo Article Management CMS software about potential holes that could allow for some very large-scale damage to be done.    Multiple vulnerabilities have been identified in Vivvo Article Management CMS, which could be exploited by remote attackers to compromise a vulnerable server.   The first issue is due to an input validation error in the "pdf_version.php" script that does not validate the "id" parameter before being used in SQL statements, which could be exploited by malicious people to conduct SQL injection attacks.   The second vulnerability is due to an input validation error in the "index.php" script that do not validate the "classified_path" parameter, which may be exploited by remote attackers to include local or remote scripts with the privileges of the web server.    Versions 3.2 and higher of the software are effected, and, unfortunately, there has been no patch issued for the issue.
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New vulnerabilities include a critical flaw in Internet Explorer and a "major" bug in Firefox.
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In the very week Mozilla Firefox Version 1.0 was launched, a series of potentially nasty security holes have been uncovered in older versions of the browser.
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Security company Internet Security Systems Inc. (ISS) is warning its customers about a critical security hole in a commonly used technology from the Mozilla Foundation called the Netscape Network Security Services (NSS) library that could make Web servers vulnerable to remote attack.
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In recent years, buffer overflows topped the list as the most popular vulnerability used by hackers to compromise websites. However, the latest report from Mitre Corp., a U.S.
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Web servers may be vulnerable to attack, security company warns.
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A list comprising top twenty threats to computers from hackers has been issued by the Sans Institute to guard companies against the most common loopholes in their system, which makes them susceptible to cyber crimes.
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Issued by the respected Sans Institute, the Top 20 list helps organisations find out if they are closing the most commonly exploited loopholes.
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Lousy code, PHP and shell script attacks and search engine hacking tools lead to vulnerabilities, study says.
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Security researchers say Google may be on to something with its research on whether IIS servers are more likely to be vulnerable to malware. But there could be a plethora of reasons why that's the case.
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Businesses have more to worry about with end-user abuse and security lapses, research suggests.
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Blog: Thousands of Web sites worldwide now host links to malicious code servers.
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IT security and research organization The SANS Institute is set to release its annual Top 20 list of Internet security vulnerabilities on Friday, with the intention of offering organizations at least a starting point for addressing critical issues.
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IT security and research organization The SANS Institute is releasing its annual Top 20 list of Internet security vulnerabilities this week, with the intention of offering organizations at least a starting point for addressing critical issues.