Recently in Microsoft Category

A week has passed since Microsoft published security advisory KB2269637 that details the technology underlying the DLL hijacking vulnerabilities. Since then security researchers have looked at Windows applications from 3rd parties and from Microsoft itself and have identified many vulnerable programs Last week HD Moore from Rapid7 published an even better version of his DLL Hijacking finding tool that is in use by many of the researchers. Microsoft gave a very illustrative example on how a vulnerable application could be attacked on their SRD blog just this week.

We recommend installing the Microsoft Hotfix downloadable from KB2264107 and creating the CWDIllegalInDllSearch registry key, which instructs Windows to exclude the current working directory from the DLL loadpath when an application is started from network or WebDAV locations. In addition IT admins should keep an eye on the excellent list on vulnerable applications and their fix status that is being maintained by Secunia.

In Qualysguard we have introduced 2 new QIDs that are designed to help the IT admin to manage the installation of this Hotfix:

• QID 118423 - Microsoft Windows DLL Search Order Design Error Vulnerability (KB2269637)
  This detection indicates that the machine does not have the Hotfix installed
• QID 90634 - Hotfix KB2264107 (DLL hijacking) is Installed
  This detection indicates that the machine has the Hotfix installed and will contain the setting for registry key CWDIllegalInDllSearch in the result section

This August is bringing a record setting number of updates from Microsoft. In addition to last week's LNK update, there will be another 14 bulletins addressing 34 vulnerabilities, that IT admins will have to take care of in the weeks after Patch Tuesday. Including the LNK update,9 bulletins have a rating of critical and affect all version of the Windows OS, Internet Explorer, Silverlight and Microsoft Office.

Windows 7 and 2008 R2 have a smaller number of critical vulnerabilities than Windows XP and 2003 in function of their improved security architecture, but are still affected by 2 critical vulnerabilities each.

Internet Explorer, Office and Silverlight updates apply across the board on all Windows versions. They are a examples of the this increasingly used type of flaw, where attackers and malware go through the installed applications rather than through the core operating system.

Windows XP SP2 users do not have any patches supplied to them, even though the 5 critical vulnerabilities for XP SP3 most likely apply to their discontinued version of the OS as well. Windows XP SP2 users should upgrade to SP3 as quickly as possible.

Microsoft released an update today that addresses the LNK vulnerability. The update is rated as critical and applies to all currently supported Windows Operating systems.

We recommend applying the update as quickly as possible. Attacks using this 0-day vulnerability have been increasing.

The recently discontinued Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 are not covered by the patch. Users of these Windows 2000 and XP SP2 need to work on an upgrade strategy for these operating systems, as over time without patch support they will become increasingly susceptible to attacks from malware

Microsoft will issue an out-of-band update next Monday, August 2nd. The update will address the critical LNK vulnerability that applies to all versions of the Windows Operating system, from Windows XP SP3 to Windows 7.

Microsoft's decision to issue this upgrade before the normal Patch Tuesday on August 10 is due to reports of increasing number of attacks that use the LNK flaw.

Windows 2000 and XP SP2 users will not be covered and are now in a predicament that will become increasingly urgent. Attacks will continue to become more prevalent and their defensive options are limited. Microsoft's work-around in Advisory KB2286198 has a serious impact on the usability of the system as desktop icons are all replaced by standard generic representations and navigation is hampered. The best option for XP SP2 users is to upgrade to SP3 as soon as possible, Windows 2000 users need to migrate to a new OS alltogether.

Primary attack vectors for the LNK vulnerability are USB sticks and shared drives, ahe attack depends on a specially crafted LNK file and a custom DLL to function. Remote attacks through e-mail or websites are theoretically possible, but require multiple steps and user interaction. Nevertheless disabling SMB and WebDAV protocols in the outbound ruleset of internet facing firewalls is a measure that provides additional protection against the remote attack vector.

Update
Businessweek has an article about the SCADA connection of this flaw, Siemens has issued an advisory and update for the software components that are being attacked by some strains of the malware.

Original
Just three days after July's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft issued an advisory for an issue affecting all current Windows Operating Systems. The flaw is located in Windows Shell and can be used to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable systems. According to the advisory, Microsoft is aware of targeted attacks in the wild exploiting the issue. Brian Krebs reports that Russian AV company VirusBlokAda detected the attack while analyzing a new malware sample.

The advisory lists workarounds that can be implemented by editing the registry. They change the way certain icons are visualized, so there is a visible impact on the desktop of the user.

The advisory does not list Windows XP SP2, or Windows 2000 for that matter, as being affected, because Microsoft just ended support for both Operating Systems last Tuesday. However we assume the attack works against both of them and attackers will surely take advantage of this security hole. We recommend upgrading your existing Windows XP SP2 installations to SP3 as soon as possible to be able to install the security update for this issue once Microsoft publishes it. Windows 2000 users face a bigger hurdle and they need to upgrade to an entirely new Operating System.

Microsoft's July update is a small step for security updates, but a huge leap for enterprise security. Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 are being retired from official support today and will not receive security updates anymore. Our own internal statistics indicate that approximately 50 % of Windows XP machines are still on the SP2 level and external surveys put the number of organizations that still depend on SP2 at 77 %. This month there are four bulletins, two for security flaws in Windows and two for Microsoft Office. We rank MS10-042 as the most urgent update: It covers Windows XP (both SP2 and SP3) and Windows 2003 and addresses the Windows Help and Support Center vulnerability published by Tavis Ormandy in a much discussed full disclosure move. Microsoft showed a quick turnaround time on this update.

Next on our list is MS10-045 because it undermines the security model of attachments in Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft classified the vulnerability only as "important", but it allows an attacker to camouflage malicious files as a safe file type. An example would be to pass off an executable as a simple text file. All versions of Outlook are affected, excluding the newest Outlook 2010. The second Microsoft Office update, MS10-044 is a vulnerability in a Microsoft Access ActiveX component, is ranked critical and should be treated as a priority as well.

Last on our list is MS10-043, a vulnerability in the CDD display driver for Windows 7 and Windows 2008R2. It is ranked critical, but there are a number of mitigating factors; it is only applicable to 64 bit versions and requires a fairly high display resolution. The priority of the update depends on your environment.

Microsoft's July update is small - four bulletins in total, two of them addressing security flaws in Windows and two for Microsoft Office. Both Windows bulletins have a maximum rating of critical and both address previously disclosed vulnerabilities. The first one is for Windows XP and 2003 and fixes the Windows Help and Support Center vulnerability published by Tavis Ormandy in a much discussed full disclosure move. Microsoft showed some impressive turnaround time on that patch. The second bulletin fixes a problem in the AERO display driver component for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, which was disclosed publicly earlier in May.

The two remaining bulletins, one ranked critical and one important, are for Microsoft Office and all versions but the new Office 2010 are affected, including Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2007.

July also marks the end of support for two important Microsoft Operating Systems, Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000. Windows XP SP2 users are advised to upgrade to SP3, which will be supported throughout 2014. Windows 2000 users need to upgrade to a different version of the operating system altogether, as the entire Windows 2000 line is discontinued.

References:

• Microsoft Security Bulletin
  
• Qualys Security Alert
  

Update:

• Microsoft warns of limited, targeted exploits in the wild.
• Windows 2003 Server not affected
• Secunia dissects the Hotfix (not the workaround)

Original:

Earlier today Tavis Ormandy released an advisory disclosing a new vulnerability in Windows XP and Windows 2003. The vulnerability is in the Windows Help and Support Center component and is accessed through the protocol handler "hcp://". It can be triggered through all major browsers, but as Tavis points out it is easier to exploit under IE7. Tavis provides sample exploit code for both IE8 and IE7 in the advsiory.

As a work-around for the vulnerability, it is possible to de-register the HCP protocol on the target machine:

1. From the Start Menu, select Run
2. Type regedit then click OK (The registry editor program launches)
3. Expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and highlight the HCP key
4. Right mouse click on the HCP key, and select Delete

This workaround will disable all local, even legitimate help links that use hcp://. For example links in the Control Panel may no longer function. For more details on the workaround consult MS03-044, which lists the above instructions for an older vulnerability in the Help system.

Tavis' decision to use full disclosure for this vulnerability will certainly revive the discussions around full vs. responsible disclosure. Tavis provides some comments regarding that discussion and includes references to articles by Bruce Schneier exploring the matter.

We are working on testing the exploit and will update this post when new developments occur.

Updates:

• MIcrosoft MSRC comment on disclosure
• Microsoft Advisory KB2219475

June is a big month for Microsoft patches, there are 10 bulletins covering 34 vulnerabilities. Four bulletins address 0-day issues, the most significant being MS10-035, which fixes the 0-day published by Core Security for an information disclosure vulnerability originally published in February 2010. It also fixes the PWN2OWN vulnerability that security researcher Peter Vreugdenhil used to win ZDI'S competition at CANSECWEST, not a 0-day but high profile as it bypassed all built-in protections such as DEP and ASLR by combining multiple attack methods. MS10-039 addresses a second 0-day, the vulnerability in SharePoint, described by Microsoft in KB983438. MS10-032 and MS10-041 are the additional updates that fix vulnerabilities that were previously disclosed.

The most critical bulletins this month are MS10-035 for Internet Explorer, MS10-033 for DirectShow, and MS10-038 for Excel in Microsoft Office. All versions of IE, including IE8 are affected by MS10-035. There are 6 vulnerabilities in the update, 2 critical and it has an overall exploitability index of 1, indicating that an exploit is expected within 30 days. MS10-033 is a vulnerability in the MJPEG codec and affects a large number of Microsoft products, but its main attack vector is going to be through media files delivered through the Internet to Windows Media Player or IE. Excel has 14 vulnerabilities covered by MS10-038, with 11 in Office XP and only 3 in more recent versions (2003,2007). These vulnerabilities can be used to trigger code execution when a malicious file is opened by the user. The new Office 2010, which is scheduled to be released later this month, is not affected by any of the vulnerabilities.

MS10-032 addresses a local escalation of privilege vulnerability. While it is not remotely exploitable through any Microsoft product, 3rd party applications could expose it and provide a remote attack possibility.

MS10-040 is a remotely exploitable vulnerability in all versions of IIS, but it is present only if the administrator has downloaded and installed the Channel Binding Update and enabled Windows Authentication. It further requires an account on the system, reducing the number of vulnerable hosts to a small subset.

In related news, Adobe which published an advisory for a critical 0-day vulnerability in Flash and Reader on Friday, announced that they will provide patches on June 10th and June 29th, respectively, 2 dates that IT administrators should track closely as exploits for the vulnerability are widely available.

References:

• Microsoft SRD Blog
• Peter Vreugdenhil's research site
• Adobe APSA10-01 Advisory

Microsoft released its June 2010 advance notification for next week's Patch Tuesday. We will see 10 security bulletins addressing a total of 34 vulnerabilities. Of the 10 bulletins, 3 are categorized as critical, allowing an attacker to take full control of the targeted machine, while the remaining 7 are ranked as important. The critical vulnerabilities affect all Windows OS versions (including Windows 7) and Internet Explorer, the important ones cover Windows and Office.

The June release is a large update and will keep system administrators busy, even if they have migrated to Windows 7 already (the end of life date for Windows XP SP2 is coming closer and Windows 7 is certainly one of the options to migrate to...)

Microsoft will also address 2 currently open vulnerabilities: in SharePoint (detailed in advisory KB983438) and an information leakage in Internet Explorer, explained in advisory KB980088

Some of the patches, including one of the critical ones require a machine reboot after installation.

References:

• Microsoft June 2010 Advance Bulletin
• MSRC Blog

On July 13 of 2010, Microsoft will stop releasing security updates, hotfixes and other updates for Windows XP Service Pack 2. Microsoft advises users who are currently on XP SP2 to update to XP SP3 or Windows 7. Windows XP SP3 was released in April of 2008, which started the 24 month wind-down phase for SP2, so this end of support date by itself does not come as a surprise to IT admins who follow Microsoft's lifecycle.

Nevertheless we see a large number of machines in enterprise networks still running under Windows XP SP2. The following graph shows that only half of all Windows XP installations have upgraded to SP3 since its release. Even with a significant increase in the upgrade ratio, up from the 20% and 30% achieved in 2008 and 2009 respectively, we are still over a year away from having all machines migrated, threatening to leave many machines exposed to exploits for the vulnerabilities that we expect in the second half of 2010. Home users should be better off, as XP SP3 is being pushed down automatically to machines that participate in Windows or Microsoft update. On the enterprise side however it seems that 2 years of burn-in time is not enough, and it would be helpful if Microsoft could extend support for one more year.

PS: Support for Windows Embedded XP SP2, an OS quite frequently used for ATMs and POS systems is extended to Jan 2011, so users of embedded systems have a bit longer to prepare. Frequently these embedded systems represent an even bigger challenge to keep up to date; they are often managed by a 3rd party and sometimes not even properly recognized as Windows computer systems.

Microsoft's release for May 2010 contains 2 Bulletins (MS10-030 and MS10-031) fixing 2 vulnerabilities, one of its low impact releases. MS10-031 is for Microsoft Office and addresses a remote code execution vulnerability present in all versions, Office XP, 2003 and 2007. Its exploitability index is 2, so exploit code within the next 30 days is unlikely. Microsoft's blog post at the SRD goes into further detail on the difficulties in writing a working exploit. While the bulletin only carries a severity of "important", we consider it to be the more urgent of today's release.

The second bulletin MS10-030 fixes a vulnerability in Windows Outlook Express and Windows Mail, both mail clients for the POP/IMAP protocols. The vulnerability allows remote code execution and is classified as "critical". Successful exploitation however is unlikely (exploitability index = 2) as it requires extensive user involvement including setting up an e-mail account on a malicious server. We don't see Outlook Express/Windows Mail being used in the enterprise but smaller businesses could be affected.

Microsoft did not address the recent SharePoint vulnerability (KB983438). We recommend looking into the advisory and implementing the suggested work-around which restricts the access to the Help functionality in SharePoint.

Following the large April update Microsoft will have only 2 Bulletins to release in May. One of the bulletins is for Windows and is rated "critical" for all members of the family but Windows 7 and 2008R2. On the Win7/2008R2 combo it is rated "important", continuing the consistently better showing of Microsoft's newer OSs. The second bulletin is for Office, where all versions are affected and it is rated "important", however it is rated "critical" for Visual Basic for Applications and its SDK. .

Microsoft will not address the recent SharePoint vulnerability (KB983438) and recommends applying into the work-arounds shown in the advisory, restricting the access to the Help functionality in SharePoint.

Last month's bulletins have been seen a fair amount of discussion. Microsoft reissued MS10-025 on April 27 after the initial patch was found to be ineffective. The bulletin only applies to Windows 2000 and is rated "critical", so if it affects your installation please check whether you have applied the latest version. As support for Windows 2000 (and XP SP2) is being discontinued in the summer, IT admins that still run either of these Operating Systems should be working on a replacement strategy. Earlier this week Core Security published 2 advisories concerning MS10-024 and MS10-028, showing that they contained fixes for vulnerabilities not listed in the bulletins. While the inclusion of internally found vulnerabilities is considered normal, Core suggests that the severity for MS10-024 should be upgraded.

Last week Qualys was at Infosecurity Europe meeting customers and demoing the new QualysGuard Malware Detection service. We also gave a presentation on integrating Vulnerability and Patch data, which you can download from here.

Microsoft's patch release for April contains 11 bulletins covering 25 vulnerabilities. The bulletins address a wide array of operating systems and software packages, IT administrators with a good inventory of their installed base will have an easier time evaluating which machines need patches.

Microsoft patches 2 open 0-day vulnerabilities - MS10-020 for the SMBv2 Denial of Service vulnerability, only present on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (KB977544) and MS10-022 for the F1 attack through Internet Explorer (KB981169). MS10-020 fixes other SMB vulnerabilities as well and is a critical update for all platforms.

The most critical bulletins this month are MS10-026, MS10-027 and MS10-019. MS10-026 addresses a DirectShow vulnerability that can be exploited through visualizing a media file which can lead to remote code execution. MS10-027 is a Windows Media Player Active X control vulnerability which can lead to similar results. Both are relatively easy to exploit and have a low exploitability index, however Windows 7 users are not affected by either of the vulnerabilities. MS10-019 addresses a flaw in the Windows Authenticode algorithm involved during the installation process of new software. The flaw allows for a downgrade from the current v2 Authenticode algorithm to the deprecated v1 algorithm. If an attacker follows this downgrade with an attack on v1 (a sophisticated multi-stage attack), he could pass off malicious install packages as legitimately signed by major manufacturers. This vulnerability has a exploit rating of difficult, meaning that even advanced attackers will take a while to come up with the necessary exploit code - still we recommend patching this during the normal cycle for all machines.

MS10-025 is a critical Windows Media Services vulnerability but only affects Windows 2000. Windows 2000 Server will have its extended Support retired in mid-July of this year and will then cease to receive security updates. Organizations that still use Windows 2000 need to evaluate a migration strategy.

The remaining bulletins are ranked as important and moderate - MS10-028 is a file format attack against Visio, which can result in remote code execution. MS10-023 is a similar attack against Microsoft Publisher. As these software packages are not widely installed a good inventory will be helpful in evaluating the exposure. MS10-021 is an interesting side effect created by registry linking. MS10-024 is a Denial of Service vulnerability in the SMTP server of Windows 2003-64bit only and MS10-029 an IPv6/IPv4 packet envelope vulnerability that can lead to information disclosure.

This is a big release for Microsoft, addressing a wide selection of software. IT administrators probably will not have all of the included software packages and configurations installed in their environment and therefore will need to install only a subset of the 11 bulletins.

In addition Adobe released their quarterly patches for Adobe Reader and Acrobat on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix. The update is critical and fixes multiple 15 vulnerabilities with a maximum exposure of "remote code execution".

References:

• SRD Blog post by Jonathan Ness/Andrew Roths @ MSRC Engineering with more details
• MSRC Blog post with Exploitability Index
• Information on the new Adobe updater

Today Microsoft released their advance notification for next week's Patch Tuesday. There will be 11 security bulletins (5 critical) affecting a range of Windows operating system components as well as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange. This is a fairly large update and will keep system administrators busy.

Of particular interest is that Microsoft will fix 2 open 0-day vulnerabilities - the F1 attack through the Internet Explorer KB981169 and the SMBv2 Denial of Service vulnerability, only present on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 KB977544.

The 5 critical bulletins affect Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 2003, 2008 and Windows 7. An attacker can use these vulnerabilities to remotely execute code on the victim's machine and they should be addressed as quickly as possible.

An additional 5 security bulletins are rated as important and apply to Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange and Windows. If left un-patched, an attacker could execute code, cause a denial of service or obtain elevated privileges on the victim's machine. The remaining security bulletin is rated as Important.

Most of the patches require a machine reboot after installation.

Similar to past Patch Tuesdays, Windows 7 has less critical updates to install than the older operating systems versions, an indication that the newer version of Windows are more robust and secure out of the box.

In addition to the Microsoft patches, administrators will also have to pay attention to the security fixes coming out from Adobe for the Reader and Acrobat products. The Adobe update is rated as critical and a successful exploit will allow the attacker to take control of the target machine.

Today Microsoft released MS10-018, a critical bulletin with 10 patches affecting all versions of Internet Explorer. The release includes the patch for the one of the current 0-day exploits against IE6 and IE7, the "iepeers" (KB981374 and CVE-2010-0806) vulnerability. The original schedule for the bulletin was April 13th, during the normal April Patch Tuesday, but it was anticipated because Microsoft has detected an increase in exploits for that 0-day vulnerability..

All users of Internet Explorer 6 and 7 should patch immediately, as the exploit for these versions in known and becoming more popular.

Users of Internet Explorer 8 are not affected by the exploit, but the bulletin contains 2 critical vulnerabilities for this version, so we can expect exploit code for them soon. IT Admins will have to decide whether they can take the risk of patching IE8 only during next patch Tuesday - 2 weeks out, or whether to patch sooner and incur the cost of having 2 separate patch days.

The other open 0-day, the F1 flaw in IE has not been fixed yet, and last week's PWN2OWN IE8 flaw is still under investigation by the security team at Microsoft, so we will continue to see updates in the browser area.

Microsoft will release MS10-018 a patch for the critical Internet Explorer 0-day vulnerability KB981374 out of band tomorrow, on March 30th. Microsoft's decision to accelerate the release rather than waiting until next Patch Tuesday on April 13th is an indication that attacks against the "iepeers" vulnerability are on the rise.

Similar to what happened with the last IE 0-day patch MS10-002, Microsoft is including fixes for 9 other vulnerabilities, so the patch is critical for ALL versions of IE

If you are still using IE6 or IE7, patch immediately. But even if you are on IE8 you should patch as quickly as possible, as attackers will start reverse engineering the flaws addressed and preparing corresponding exploits within the week.

Kudos to Microsoft for their quick turn-around on this vulnerability.

The exploit for the Internet Explorer 6 and 7 vulnerability announced yesterday (KB981374) is public now. Late yesterday, Moshe Ben Abu published a Metasploit Module for the exploit after tracking down the exploit to a webpage.

> But Microsoft also released advisory KB981374 which describes a 0-day vulnerability
> reported to Microsoft only recently. At the moment only a limited number of targeted
> attacks have been reported. Internet Explorer 8 is not vulnerable, another good reason
> to update to this latest version of IE. There are not a lot of details available on the
> vulnerability, but for IE6/7 workarounds apply and are detailed in the advisory.

Contrary to what we expected last week, the Microsoft March Security announcements have a little surprise in it.

The standard bulletins cover Windows Movie Maker/Producer and Office:

• MS10-016 - possible code execution in Windows Movie Maker - ranked important: an attacker can send a malicious file to the target. When the file gets opened, remote code execution is possible. The exploitability index is high, meaning that the file format vulnerability is relatively easy to exploit. Windows XP and Vista ship with vulnerable versions. While Windows 7 does not ship with a vulnerable version, a user could have downloaded and installed the 2.6 version, which is affected. The bulletin does not provide a patch for the also affected Windows Producer, a little used multimedia add-on to Powerpoint.
• MS10-017 - possible code execution in Microsoft Excel - ranked important as well. This bulletin covers 7 vulnerabilities, all of them file format based. All versions of Office are affected, including Mac Office 2004 and 2008. An attacker needs to trick the target to open a specially crafted Excel document, which will allow the attacker to take control of the target system. Exploitability is high for the majority of vulnerabilities listed, so we suggest to put this patch on a fast installation schedule. Attack vectors include also Excel viewer and SharePoint server.

But Microsoft also released advisory KB981374 which describes a 0-day vulnerability reported to Microsoft only recently. At the moment only a limited number of targeted attacks have been reported. Internet Explorer 8 is not vulnerable, another good reason to update to this latest version of IE. There are not a lot of details available on the vulnerability, but for IE6/7 workarounds apply and are detailed in the advisory.

No major updates on advisory KB981169, also for Internet Explorer, which requires the target to press F1 to launch the attack and can best be avoided by user education.

References:

• Microsoft March 2010 Bulletin
• Qualys Security Alert
  

After the massive February update Microsoft will only release 2 Bulletins next week. Both are rated as "important," a medium criticality rating for Microsoft. The first bulletin is for the Windows Operating System affecting the only desktop platforms XP, Vista and Windows 7. The second Bulletin is for Microsoft Office and applies to all versions on Windows (Office XP, 2003 and 2007) and Mac OS X (Office 2004 and 2008), plus SharePoint and the Excel Viewer.

The lower criticality ratings allow IT admins more time to address these March bulletins. It is likely that the Office vulnerabilities should be handled first, as file format vulnerabilities in general have been on the rise in the last year and end users frequently trust open office format files such as Excel due to their business oriented, serious nature.

Microsoft issued earlier this week an advisory KB981169 for a clever attack through Internet Explorer. It requires the end user to press F1 in a pop-up box, so the main defense is make your users aware of the existence of the flaw and instruct them to get in touch with IT should this happen.

Stay tuned for our detailed analysis on next Tuesday.

References:

• Microsoft Advanced Notification for March 2010
• Vulnerability in VBScript Could Allow Remote Code Execution

Microsoft's February 2010 Patch Tuesday was slated to be the biggest release for Microsoft fixes in the last two years - 14 bulletins addressing 34 vulnerabilities. But the Google/CN Internet Explorer 0-day forced Microsoft to accelerate the testing of the planned IE bulletin and release it early, still in January. That leaves 13 bulletins covering 26 vulnerabilities for the February release, which constitutes one of the bigger patch Tuesdays.

There are 5 critical vulnerabilities for the Windows Operating System family - the newer versions Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 are only affected by 3 of them. Rewrites of the TCP/IP stack and the URI handling in Windows 7 and 2008/R2 improved on the implementation of these core OS capabilities.

Overall highest on our list for patching are MS10-006 SMB client and MS10-013 DirectShow, which affect all versions of Windows and have a low exploitability index. Next are MS10-007 Shell URL handling, which is critical for Windows 2000, XP and 2003 and MS10-008, an update to the ActiveX Killbit settings, applicable to all platforms.

MS10-012 is a bulletin for SMB that server administrators should focus on. It allows a malicious, unauthenticated party to launch a remote denial of service attack. In addition remote authenticated clients can execute code using another flaw addressed in the bulletin.

MS10-010 addresses an interesting vulnerability - it is in the hypervisor of Windows 2008. This virtualization vulnerability allows a guest operating system to crash the host operating system, affecting all virtual machines running on the same physical host. Virtualization is increasingly used in corporate IT environments and in cloud computing initiatives and we see this class of vulnerability gaining importance.

Microsoft Office has 2 bulletins, both rated as important. While the newest version of Office for Windows, Office 2007, is not affected, users of all other versions, including on MAC OS X should update as quickly as possible because file based vulnerabilities have been a favorite of attackers in the last year.

References:

• Microsoft Security Bulletin
• Technical insight from Microsoft
• SANS ranking for February 2010 patches

Microsoft released today the patch for the critical Internet Explorer 0-day flaw that has been widely covered by us and the security community in general. MS10-002 fixes a total of 8 vulnerabilities, including the 0-day which is identified as CVE-2010-0249 and is attributed to Meron Sellem from BugSec.

In the MSRC blog post announcing the release, Microsoft gives some insight on how they were able to turn around this patch in record time. Meron had reported the vulnerability in late August of 2009 and Microsoft had it confirmed in early September. By the time of public disclosure of the attacks against Google and others, the fix was in essence ready and tested. It was slated for release in the February Patch bulletin. Microsoft had to decide whether an out-of-band release of the patch was warranted or whether to bundle it into the February release as originally planned. An out-of-band release causes additional work for IT administrators that are tasked with addressing operating system vulnerabilities and are have been feeling the strain of keeping updated the growing number of software packages that attackers are increasingly targeting.

Nevertheless, given that exploits are available and that security researchers have shown that DEP as a defense can be circumvented, we recommend applying this update as soon as possible.

Microsoft starts 2010 slowly - a single bulletin containing one vulnerability in the embedded OpenType Font (EOT) engine. Due to the memory model in Windows 2000 the vulnerability is critical on that version of the Windows Operating System, all others receive a low severity rating. The flaw can be exploited through any OpenType enabled application such as Internet Explorer, PowerPoint, Word, etc by viewing a webpage or a document. Users of Windows 2000 should upgrade as quickly as possible.

There are 2 significant releases from other vendors today:

• Oracle has released their quarterly Critical Patch Update today. It contains 25 fixes for 7 of their products, including application servers and database engine. The majority of the vulnerabilities are remotely exploitable without authentication and IT admins should be taking a close look at the exposure these products have in their networks. In general database engines should have no necessity to be connected to open networks, but the application servers are very likely exposed.
• Adobe is also publishing their quarterly patch - and it will address a vulnerability in Adobe Reader that was documented as being actively exploited in the wild since the week before Christmas. There are workarounds are available, the official recommendation is to blacklist the JavaScript function that is being exploited. Blacklisting is a capability introduced by Adobe in their last update to Adobe Reader v9 and v8 in October 2009 and might not be familiar to many IT admins yet. An alternative recommendation is to turn off JavaScript completely in Adobe Reader - JavaScript has played a major role in the exploitation of Adobe Reader in 2009, so this a good preventive and defensive measure. As this setting disables functionality potentially needed by users, IT admins need to evaluate their individual situations.
  
  This release is also introducing the new Adobe updater process, which will according to Brad Arkin's tweet come preconfigured for automatic, silent updates à la Google Chrome

Intevydis, a security research company in Russia has announced last week that they will publish server-based 0-day vulnerabilities for the next 3 weeks. The first two are live and have POC code for Sun Directory Server 7.0 and Tivoli Directory Server 6.2. We are monitoring these releases and will keep you updated on further development.

References:

• Microsoft Security Bulletin
• Qualys Security Advisory

Over the weekend Jericho published on the OSVDB blog an analysis of annual vulnerability numbers that Elinor Mills from CNET had written about on Thursday in her InSecurity Complex blog. Some of the numbers originated from Qualys and we were not specific enough on the exact scope. As Jericho speculated our numbers were indeed for a more narrow set of products - not for all of Adobe and Microsoft software, but specifically for Adobe Reader and Microsoft Office. Elinor has since updated the article.

The overall point that we are trying to make remains the same - patching such applications is being neglected by most IT admins and attackers have increasingly shifted their attention to exploiting vulnerabilities in them. On Friday Brad Arkin from Adobe stated that Adobe Reader as a cross operating system application has a bigger installed base than Microsoft Windows, which makes it a very attractive target to attack.

What is your opinion on why the number of vulnerabilities found in Adobe Reader have gone up in 2009? Did attackers first notice that there was a potential, started writing exploits and then security researchers followed up or was it the other way around?

I am looking forward for your comments...