Hackers Don't Time Exploits for Impact
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Cybercriminals do not stockpile exploits, then time their release to do the most damage, security researcher says.
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The proof-of-concept code that targets a bug in Microsoft Works' file converter software isn't likely to become a major attack vector, but its ease of use is not to be denied.
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As per suggestions contained in the FAQ: Herein lies a report of two identified and as-of-yet uncorrected security flaws in Scoop. &nbsp;Enough detail will be provided to assist admins in investigating and correcting the flaws, but it is the author's hope that the details of the flaws will be sufficiently obscured to prevent abuse by the undesirables. Executive summary: Through the exploitation of various unchecked privileged operations, attackers may be able to perform admin-level actions leading to data loss. &nbsp;Additionally, well-intentioned security measures combined with XSS vulnerabilities can be exercised to simulate admin-level action, resulting in data loss.
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Proof of concept exploit sparks full disclosure row Security watchers warn that an unpatched vulnerability in RealPlayer poses a severe risk.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - It took less than 24 hours for attackers to crank out proof-of-concept code targeting the one critical vulnerability disclosed -- and patched -- Tuesday morning by Microsoft, security researchers warned. Early Wednesday, analysts with Symantec's DeepSight threat network alerted customers of JavaScript exploit code for the critical vulnerability in Windows 2000 that was revealed in Microsoft's monthly patch cycle. The proof-of-concept was posted to the Internet by someone with a Brazilian e-mail address. An hour-and-a-half later, Symantec updated its alert to say that additional exploit code was also available to users of Immunity's popular CANVAS penetration testing ("pentest") software. To call attention to the added danger, Symantec also raised the vulnerability's threat score from Tuesday's initial 7.1 (out of a possible 10) to 8.5 today. The Windows 2000 bug -- the only one rated critical of the four patched Tuesday -- is in Windows Agent, the component that drives the operating system's interactive animated help characters. The best known, and in its time, most detested, character was dubbed "Clippy," a.k.a. the Office Assistant, a bouncy paperclip designed to answer users' questions about Microsoft Office. The developer disabled Clippy by default as of Office XP and put it to rest when Office 2007 debuted earlier this year. The JavaScript-based exploit fits nicely with analysis made yesterday by Tom Cross, a researcher with IBM Internet Security Systems' X-Force. The vulnerability, said Cross Tuesday, is in the Agent ActiveX control, which are typically exploited by duping users into visiting Web sites where malicious script code has been planted, and "attackers will use a pretty common attack vector," he said Tuesday. The quick appearance today of proof-of-concept also matches his initial impression. "This uses a pretty common attack vector, and it fits the profile of a lot of bugs." Symantec advised users who were unable to immediately apply the patch to disable their browser's script-handling capabilities. "A successful exploit requires the execution of active content," its advisory said. "To mitigate against this and other latent vulnerabilities, disable support for active content in the browser." VeriSign iDefense, which was credited by Microsoft for reporting the bug, also posted an advisory today; in it, the security vendor spells out how to set the "kill bit" in the Windows registry to disable the Agent ActiveX control. Microsoft has posted its technical write-up of the Agent vulnerability in the MS07-051 security bulletin. Tuesday's update is also a replacement for an earlier April fix of Agent, an indication that the company's developers didn't find all the bugs in the component five months ago. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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It&#39;s not that there aren&#39;t Unix attacks that work. It&#39;s that pretty much everything the security industry does misrepresents the actual balance between attacks on Microsoft&#39;s products and attacks on Unix and open source.
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Antivirus vendors have yet to see the code used in any attacks, however.
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Unpatched vulnerabilities may leave computers open to remote attacks.
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Exploit code for two of Tuesday's patches have been posted to mailing lists by researchers.
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It took less than 24 hours for attackers to crank out code targeting a Windows 2000 vulnerability.
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Hackers wouldn&#39;t bother writing malicious code to infect the Macintosh unless those computers actually mattered. By Eric Hellweg.
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(InfoWorld) - A new version of the IcePack hacker exploit tool kit has been released, security researchers warned Tuesday, and for the first time it includes attack code designed to exploit an unpatched, or zero-day, Microsoft vulnerability. Three of IcePack's eight exploit tools are new, said Roger Thompson, chief technology officer at Exploit Prevention Labs. That's noteworthy in and of itself, Thompson said. "The mix of old and new exploits is to be expected, but three new ones in one update is pretty impressive," he noted. But the new tool kit also sports a first. "The latest iteration has done something original," said Thompson, pointing to an exploit that attacks a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft's DirectX software development kit (SDK). "The closest to a tool-kit zero-day exploit [before] was for the ANI [animated cursor] vulnerability." He was referring to a Windows bug that surfaced in early April. By the time that Mpack, an IcePack predecessor, added the ANI exploit, however, Microsoft had patched the vulnerability with an emergency out-of-cycle update. The DirectX SDK bug was disclosed by Polish researcher Krystian Kloskowski in a post to the milw0rm.com site in mid-August. Microsoft did not release a fix for the flaw in the regularly scheduled updates issued earlier Tuesday. IcePack is only one of several click-to-attack malware tool kits in circulation. Derived from the earlier Mpack, IcePack joins others boasting monikers such as NeoSploit and WebAttacker that cater to what Thompson called "lazy crooks." "Originally there was just WebAttacker, but they screwed up and then NeoSploit came along," Thompson said as he rattled off the exploit tool kit genealogy. "Then there was Mpack, which everyone at first thought was just WebAttacker, but it wasn't. Now there's IcePack." He estimated that nine to 12 malware tool kits are currently in use. "They all use very similar code, and they're all trying to make a buck out of selling to lazy crooks," said Thompson. Even though the just-updated IcePack features the first zero-day attack code seen in a malware kit, Thompson downplayed the threat. Sort of. "This is not an end-of-the-world kind of thing, since not many people will have the [DirectX] SDK. But no one knows what other software packages use that [vulnerable] ActiveX control. It's a little like Russian roulette that way." Other researchers confirmed Thompson's assessment. Symantec, for instance, warned customers of its DeepSight threat network that it had spotted in-the-wild attacks using the DirectX exploit. Symantec's researchers also confirmed that the other two exploits new to IcePack target vulnerabilities in Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Widgets. Both of those bugs, however, have been patched. Taking aim at patched vulnerabilities is a common characteristic of multistrike kits, even though it might seem counterintuitive, said Thompson. "They usually go after lesser-known vulnerabilities," he said.
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A patch has been issued for the JpegOfDeath hole. But so what? No one believes every single user of Microsoft&#39;s Internet Explorer is going to apply it, and this means the door is wide open for hackers.
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Vulnerability could allow an attacker to gain complete control of a system.
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Prepare yourself for "time bomb" exploits that attack web-based systems at a pre-determined time.
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Intrusion prevention capabilities in IOS can be circumvented by hackers, putting companies at risk of attack.
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Flaws in media players could automatically download malicious code, let hackers in.