What’s old is new again
Yesterday, Microsoft put out an advisory to a security vulnerability specific to the Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 SP2, and Windows 7 RC operating systems. No other Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 RTM are impacted.
Holy cow, once again the older systems (you go XP) are more secure then the new systems. Why is that you say? Well this exploit was first found a decade ago. Yes, you did read that correct, in 1999 this was discovered and patched for the operating systems at the time. Yet no one thought to put that into the: Newest, Most Secure, Latest and Greatest operating systems.
So what is this vulnerability?
According to Microsoft:
What might an attacker use this vulnerability to do?
An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. Most attempts to exploit this vulnerability will cause an affected system to stop responding and restart.
I like the last four words, “stop responding and restart”. We had an acronym for that back in the day. BSOD. But out of all of this, the thing that bothers me the most is Microsoft’s response:
Microsoft is concerned that this new report of a vulnerability was not responsibly disclosed, potentially putting computer users at risk. We continue to encourage responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities. We believe the commonly accepted practice of reporting vulnerabilities directly to a vendor serves everyone’s best interests. This practice helps to ensure that customers receive comprehensive, high-quality updates for security vulnerabilities without exposure to malicious attackers while the update is being developed.
Microsoft is concerned that this new report of a vulnerability was not responsibly disclosed? Excuse me what? It’s not new, it was disclosed properly the first time. Why do others become responsible for your oversight?
With that said Microsoft has issued two do it yourself resolutions until they can get a patch pushed.
The first is to Disable SMB2 in the registry:
Impact of workaround. Host will not be able to communicate using SMB2.
- Click Start, click Run, type Regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
- Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services - Click LanmanServer.
- Click Parameters.
- Right-click to add a new DWORD (32 bit) Value.
- Enter smb2 in the Name data field, and change the Value data field to 0.
- Exit.
- Restart the “Server” service by performing one of the following:
- Open up the computer management MMC, navigate to Services and Applications, click Services, right-click the Server service name and click Restart. Answer Yes in the pop-up menu.
- From a command prompt and with administrator privileges, type net stop server and then net start server.
The second is to Block TCP ports 139 and 445 at the firewall:
Impact of Workaround: Several Windows services use the affected ports. Blocking connectivity to the ports may cause various applications or services to not function. Some of the applications or services that could be impacted are listed below:
- Applications that use SMB (CIFS)
- Applications that use mailslots or named pipes (RPC over SMB)
- Server (File and Print Sharing)
- Group Policy
- Net Logon
- Distributed File System (DFS)
- Terminal Server Licensing
- Print Spooler
- Computer Browser
- Remote Procedure Call Locator
- Fax Service
- Indexing Service
- Performance Logs and Alerts
- Systems Management Server
- License Logging Service
Personally, I would block those on your internet facing firewall of you broadband router.
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Safari security holes
According to a ZDNet news article, Apple has release a patch to correct two security vulnerabilities to it’s Safari Browser.
These flaws, which impacted Windows and Mac OsX systems could lead to cross-site scripting and Remote code execution attacks.
To define these terms:
According to cgisecurity.com:
Cross site scripting (also known as XSS) occurs when a web application gathers malicious data from a user. The data is usually gathered in the form of a hyperlink which contains malicious content within it. The user will most likely click on this link from another website, instant message, or simply just reading a web board or email message. Usually the attacker will encode the malicious portion of the link to the site in HEX (or other encoding methods) so the request is less suspicious looking to the user when clicked on. After the data is collected by the web application, it creates an output page for the user containing the malicious data that was originally sent to it, but in a manner to make it appear as valid content from the website. Many popular guestbook and forum programs allow users to submit posts with html and javascript embedded in them. If for example I was logged in as “john” and read a message by “joe” that contained malicious javascript in it, then it may be possible for “joe” to hijack my session just by reading his bulletin board post. Further details on how attacks like this are accomplished via “cookie theft” are explained in detail below.
From wikipedia.com
The ability to trigger arbitrary code execution from one machine on another is often referred to as remote code execution. In computer security, arbitrary code execution is used to describe an attacker’s ability to execute any commands of the attacker’s choice on a target machine or in a target process. It is commonly used in arbitrary code execution vulnerability to describe a software bug that gives an attacker a way to execute arbitrary code. A program that is designed to exploit such a vulnerability is called an arbitrary code execution exploit. Most of these vulnerabilities allow the execution of machine code and most exploits therefore inject and execute shellcode to give an attacker an easy way to manually run arbitrary commands.
Please remember, no matter what anyone says, no operating system is 100% safe as long as it touches the internet.
Categories: Browser Tags: arbitrary code execution, attacker, computer security, forum programs, hex, hyperlink, instant message, mac osx, malicious content, malicious data, safari, safari browser, security holes, security vulnerabilities, software bug, target machine, valid content, vulnerabilities, web application, web board, wikipedia, zdnet news
