Exploit Threat Ratchets Up On Windows Vulnerability
689953
A recently detected exploit code foreshadows a likely worm-style attack on Windows machines plagued with the JPEG vulnerability made public last week, security experts said Thursday.
271561
Antivirus company Symantec is warning its customers about a number of critical holes in Microsoft&#39;s Windows operating system. The holes, which surfaced late last week, could make Windows systems vulnerable to compromise by remote attackers.
86222
In brief Exploit circulating for unpatched vuln
262607
Group of security professionals produces a patch for a flaw in Windows Shell that is being used in cyberattacks.
324468
A vulnerability in Windows XP and other products means JPEG viruses may not remain just a hoary myth.
715617
Security vendors are warning of two new malware variants that exploit a recently patched flaw in Windows, but Microsoft says that attacks are not on the rise.
435808
Attacks exploit IE flaw, and allow attacker to gain complete control of your PC.
711347
Code that exploits a "critical" Windows flaw has been posted on the Net, opening the door for a worm to be created.
111115
Blog: The most serious vulnerabilities allow attackers to run code on compromised machines.
300814
Security experts warned on Wednesday that &quot;exploit code&quot; has been released for the critical flaw discovered in the way Windows and other Microsoft products handle JPEG images (see our previous coverage).
632521
Better install Microsoft's latest patches--hackers have posted attack code to exploit the flaws in Works.
281798
Before the sun set on Microsoft&#39;s Patch Tuesday this month, security firm Secunia discovered a vulnerability in Firefox that malicious hackers could exploit to compromise a user&#39;s system. Here&#39;s the catch: Exploiting the bug depends on interaction between Mozilla&#39;s browser and Microsoft&#39;s Internet Explorer.
63078
Security researchers have discovered another vulnerability in Windows XP Service Pack 2, but it doesn&#39;t appear to be an immediate threat.
35029
Unpatched vulnerabilities may leave computers open to remote attacks.
438457
(InfoWorld) - Microsoft on Tuesday issued six security updates for Windows, Office, and .Net Framework, patching a total of 11 vulnerabilities -- five of them rated critical. The most serious of the batch is MS07-039, said security analysts who, unlike lastÂ  month, had no trouble naming that critical update as the one which should beÂ  patched first. "By far, this is the top of the list this month," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. MS07-039 patches a pair of bugs in Active Directory in Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003, the two supported server editions of Microsoft's operating system. The most dangerous of the two is a vulnerability in the way Active Directory validates an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) request.Â  According to Microsoft's write-up, "an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system." "Definitely at the top of today's list," agreed David Dewey, a researcher with IBM Internet Security Systems' X-Force team. "It's definitely exploitable." Dewey should know, since it was a colleague at ISS, Neel Mehta, who discovered the flaw last summer. "Neel's created proof-of-concept code in-house during the time we worked on this with Microsoft," said Dewey. "It would certainly be worth the effort" to exploit this, added Storms. "Active Directory is in the center of every Windows network. There's a lot in there, including the group policy objects that set security -- and everything about every user." Unlike most vulnerabilities, the Active Directory bug can be exploited without any user interaction, and on Windows 2000 Server, the older of the two operating systems, it can be attacked by an anonymous user. Although Windows Server 2003 may look safer at first glance -- an attacker must have valid credentials to exploit the bug on that edition -- looks can be deceiving, said Tom Cross, another X-Force researcher. "In this case, the authentication requirements become less important," said Cross. "Anyone on the network -- an employee, for example -- would by definition have credentials." Worse, said Cross, is that outside attackers could exploit this without a lot of trouble by bundling an MS07-039 exploit with a multi-strike attack that figures on compromising some fraction of enterprise laptops while they're outside the network. Once back inside the enterprise's perimeter, the Active Directory exploit could fire up -- using the credentials of the hijacked notebook -- to grab systems running the supposedly more secure Windows Server 2003. Two of the remaining five bulletins were pegged "critical" by Microsoft, while another two were marked "important." The final update was tagged as "moderate." MS07-036, which patches three vulnerabilities, two of them judged critical and oneÂ  of them a zero-day flaw already out in public, repairs bugs in Excel 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007. Similar vulnerabilities in other Microsoft Office document formats, including those in Word and PowerPoint, have been used by attackers to slip malicious code into corporations. Some of these attacks have been so narrowly targeted that they're launched against just one user at one company. What's interesting about this update, said a Symantec researcher in an e-mail, is that Microsoft got it wrong back in February when it downplayed the initial report of the Excel threat. Then, Symantec's DeepSight threat network analysts reported Excel 2003 was susceptible to a denial-of-service bug which, if exploited, could crash the program. Four months ago, Microsoft denied that the bugs were actually vulnerabilities. "Microsoft has completed its investigation of new public reports of possibleÂ  vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Excel 2003 [and] hasÂ  confirmed that these are not product vulnerabilities," a spokeswoman toldÂ  Computerworld at the time. "They are issues that can cause the application to become unresponsive. Users can restart the application," she said. "[Today's] bulletin includes a fix for a previously disclosed denial-of-service issue from February 2007 which is now billed as having the potential for remote code execution," noted Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec's security response group. As Friedrichs pointed out, Microsoft characterized all three bugs patched by MS07-036 as having a "remote code execution" impact, meaning that hackers couldÂ  inject their own malware into a PC after exploiting the Excel flaws. The third critical update, MS07-040, plugs three holes in the .Net Framework, the primary Windows runtime environment called on by developers. Notably, all three vulnerabilities were previewed during a sneak peek at the Syscan'07 security conference last week in Singapore. But the patches may be a ton of trouble to corporate IT managers, said Storms, because the .Net Framework is so widely used by corporate developers of in-house software. "Not only will [companies] have to run QA on the patches, they'll have to run QA on the code that runs on .Net," said Storms. The fixes in MS07-040 apply to all but Version 3.x of .Net Framework, adding additional complexity to in-enterprise application testing. Of the remaining security updates, one fixes a flaw in Publisher 2007, another patches Internet Information Services 5.1 on Windows XP Professional SP2, and the thirdÂ  quashes a bug in Windows Vista's bundled firewall. That last, although rated "moderate," second-from-the-bottom in Microsoft's four-step severity rating system, is worth some reflection, said Symantec's Friedrichs. "Microsoft's decision to rewrite the Windows network stack and its accompanying firewall [for Vista] continues to have long-term security implications," Friedrichs said. "A network stack can take decades of heavy scrutiny in order to become battle hardened. As an operating system's first line of defense, its quality is directly related to its ability to withstand attack." On its own, added Friedrichs, the firewall bug isn't a big deal; the result of an exploit is that the attacker can "see" the system when it should actually be completely invisible to outside probes. "[But] if this logic flaw were combined with a vulnerability in one of the exposed services, this could have more serious, widespread implications." As usual, Microsoft's monthly updates have been posted to Microsoft Update and Windows Update services, and they can also be retrieved through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).
711902
The newly discovered vulnerabilities could leave systems open to remote attacks, according to antivirus companies. Microsoft has not yet announced fixes.
250864
A trio of new and unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows were made public on security mailing lists over the weekend. By Gregg Keizer.