Video Screencast Help
Search Video Help Close Back
to help
New in the Rewards Catalog: Vouchers for "Symantec Technical Specialist" and "Symantec Certified Specialist" exams.

Security Response

Showing posts by Ben Greenbaum remove filter
Ben Greenbaum | 10 Sep 2007 | 0 comments

Hello, and welcome to this month’s blog on the Microsoft patchreleases. September is a light month, with only 4 releases, eachresolving one issue.

Which is the most critical of these vulnerabilities? Well, itdepends on who you ask. Microsoft lists the issue in the Agent ActiveXcontrol as the only ‘Critical’ update this month, however ourcalculations have resulted in a higher urgency rating for the MSN /Live Messenger issue. Both vulnerabilities grant a remote attacker theability to run arbitrary code on the target machine if the target userperforms a specific action (clicks on a link or accepts an incomingmessage). Microsoft may have rated the ActiveX issue higher because anon-vulnerable upgrade to Messenger has been available for some time.However, we rate the issue in MSN Messenger/Live Messenger higher, dueto the availability of public proof-of-concept code known to work on atleast one platform. From the perspective of an affected user, theknowledge that they could have...

Ben Greenbaum | 09 Jul 2007 | 0 comments

This month's Microsoft patch releaseincludes six bulletins, addressing 12 vulnerabilities in common clientand server software, including four in a popular developmentenvironment. Topping the heap in terms of urgency is a remotelyexploitable, server side code execution vulnerability in IIS, andthat's where we'll start:

MS07-041;KB939373Vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services Could Allow Remote Code Execution

This bulletin addresses a previously known issue in IIS 5.1 onWindows XP that was reported in late 2005 as a denial-of-serviceproblem. It is now known to be exploitable to run attacker code. IIS isnot running or installed by default on Windows XP.

  • Microsoft Internet Information Server 5.1 DLL Request Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
    BID...
  • Ben Greenbaum | 11 Jun 2007 | 0 comments

    Hello again... this month's update contains 6 advisories with atotal of 15 patched vulnerabilities. Major apps for this month wereonce again IE and Outlook/Windows Mail, coming in with 6 and 4 patchedvulnerabilities respectively. This month we also see updates forfile-based attack vectors against Visio, remotely exploitablevulnerabilities in both a dev library and a security package patched,and a fairly low profile information disclosure vulnerability in Vistadealt with.
    As usual details are given below in order of descending urgency. Happypatching, and we'll be back for another round next month...

    MS07-034; KB929123
    Cumulative Security Update for Outlook Express and Windows Mail

    This release addresses four issues in Windows Mail (vista) andOutlook Express 6 (all others). It also...

    Ben Greenbaum | 07 May 2007 | 0 comments

    May proves to be a busy month for Windowsadministrators as we received information on no less than 21vulnerabilities being addressed in this month's 7 patches. If youhappen to be responsible for any DNS servers running on Server 2000,2003 Server or SBS, you will most likely want to skip to the last oneand work your way up. For the rest of us, we'll start with the IEissues and continue from there:

    MS07-027; 931768 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer
    This is the seemingly monthly cumulative patch for IE issues. Sixdistinct issues are addressed in IE this month, as well as two issuesin third-party ActiveX controls. Note that these two are only mentionedas footnotes in the advisory and therefore do not have their ownUrgency Ratings from Microsoft. Unless otherwise...

    Ben Greenbaum | 13 Feb 2007 | 0 comments

    Anybody remember when RTF files were just innocent little things?They were like the big brother of the .txt file, or .txt v2, if youwill. Just characters on a screen, but some of them might be differentfonts or colors or sizes – maybe the occasional clipart. Who would haveguessed they are apparently the most hostile files on the Internet thismonth? "When RTFs Go Bad!…" Okay, perhaps I’m exaggerating, but thismonth Microsoft is patching no less than three vulnerabilities, inseparate applications, that can be exploited via malicious RTF filesthat contain OLE objects.

    Several of this month’s patches address issues that have beenexploited already in limited-distribution, targeted attacks. Thecombination of target-specific social engineering and privately heldvulnerability information is becoming more and more widely adopted byattackers with political and industrial motivations. While the "newbreed" of cybercriminals wants to cast as wide a net as possible, wecannot forget that...

    Ben Greenbaum | 09 Jan 2007 | 0 comments

    Welcome to 2007! Before we get started, I'd like to wish you all a happy, healthy, and safe year from the DeepSight research teams here at Symantec. May all your plans come to fruition, and may all your patches apply smoothly... This month's patch release by Microsoft is a little lighter than previous releases, and lighter even than initially projected by Microsoft themselves. On January 4th, as per their usual policy, they publicly released high-level details of the planned release. The initial advance notification mentioned eight patches. However, the notification was later modified to list only four releases. Included among the delayed releases are fixes for various Word issues. The updates for January that did make the cut cover 10 distinct vulnerabilities, which were primarily file-based, client-side issues in the Office suite.

    MS07-001...

    Ben Greenbaum | 12 Dec 2006 | 0 comments

    All aboard! Welcome to another ride on themonthly Microsoft patch train. We’ve got quite a few stops this monthand most are client-side vulnerabilities, meaning that an end user hasto take specific actions (typically by obtaining and then openinghostile content). Unless otherwise stated, the privilege granted to theattacker for all of the below vulnerabilities is the privilege level ofthe victim user. Most were publicly disclosed for the first time today,but the exceptions are noted. They are listed below in the order ofmost to least critical for the fabled “typical” network.

    Vulnerability in SNMP Could Allow Remote Code Execution MS06-074 / KB926247

    This vulnerability seems almost old-fashioned in the modern securitylandscape – a common buffer overflow in a service....

    Ben Greenbaum | 12 Dec 2006 | 0 comments

    All aboard! Welcome to another ride on the monthly Microsoft patch train. We’ve got quite a few stops this month and most are client-side vulnerabilities, meaning that an end user has to take specific actions (typically by obtaining and then opening hostile content). Unless otherwise stated, the privilege granted to the attacker for all of the below vulnerabilities is the privilege level of the victim user. Most were publicly disclosed for the first time today, but the exceptions are noted. They are listed below in the order of most to least critical for the fabled “typical” network.

    Vulnerability in SNMP Could Allow Remote Code Execution MS06-074 / KB926247

    This vulnerability seems almost old-fashioned in the modern security landscape – a common buffer overflow in a...

    Ben Greenbaum | 14 Nov 2006 | 0 comments

    Microsoft released six security bulletins this morning, covering atotal of 11 distinct security vulnerabilities. In rough order of mosturgent to least, here we go:

    Topping the list in raw urgency is MS06-066 (BID 21023 and BID 20984,CVE-2006-4688 and CVE-2006-4689). This affects everything from Win2KSP0 to XP SP2, provided that the systems have the Client Service forNetware enabled. This obviously reduces the population of vulnerablesystems, but for those systems this is where you want to start. Thisaddresses two vulnerabilities, the more severe of which is theMicrosoft Windows Client Service For Netware Remote Code ExecutionVulnerability. If your computers match that description, you are wideopen to remote attackers, who have the opportunity to run code of theirchoice on your machines – until you apply the patch, of course. Thevulnerable...

    Ben Greenbaum | 14 Nov 2006 | 0 comments

    Microsoft released six security bulletins this morning, covering a total of 11 distinct security vulnerabilities. In rough order of most urgent to least, here we go:

    Topping the list in raw urgency is MS06-066 (BID 21023 and BID 20984, CVE-2006-4688 and CVE-2006-4689). This affects everything from Win2K SP0 to XP SP2, provided that the systems have the Client Service for Netware enabled. This obviously reduces the population of vulnerable systems, but for those systems this is where you want to start. This addresses two vulnerabilities, the more severe of which is the Microsoft Windows Client Service For Netware Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. If your computers match that description, you are wide open to remote attackers, who have the opportunity to run code of their choice on your machines – until you apply the patch, of course. The...