Java Update
Couple readers told us about a security relevant update to Java. Well, you know the drill. I hope you took good notes last time you had to do it. Secunia got a reasonable summary here:
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Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.
SANS Technology Instititue, http://www.sans.edu
Unpatched Word Vulnerability
What a busy day! Microsoft just released an advisory with details about a new vulnerability in Word, which is currently being exploited in targeted attacks.
Earlier today, we found a mention of such a vulnerability in an advisory published by Symantec. Symantec published this advisory based on a sample our handler Maarten sent to our malware distribution list. The file in question was actually part of a bundle of files he sent. As far as we know, this is the only sample we had which exploits this vulnerability.
Please read the Microsoft advisory carefully. According to Microsoft's testing, it only affects Microsoft Office Word 2002 Service Pack 3. This is one reason we didn't consider this particular sample as we didn't test it with this particular version of Office.
Needless to say, this is yet another reminder that exploits like this are likely to continue in targeted attacks. Feel free to send us suspect samples. Luckily, there is some anti-virus coverage in this particular case.
As a sidenote: Maarten will be talking about his work with these targeted exploits as SANSFIRE . Better register now !
The md5 hash of the particular sample we have: 0x7C0812F6207FF8E9FEF016DE48786168 (attachement.doc). Excerpt from Virustotal:
F-Secure 7.60.13501.0 2008.07.03 Trojan-Dropper.MSWord.Agent.cq GData 2.0.7306.1023 2008.07.07 Trojan-Dropper.MSWord.Agent.cq Kaspersky 7.0.0.125 2008.07.07 Trojan-Dr Sophos 4.31.0 2008.07.07 Troj/MalDoc-Fam Webwasher-Gateway 6.6.2 2008.07.07 Exploit.Win32.Ginwui.gen!MS-Word (suspicious)
Links:
Symantec: www.securityfocus.com/bid/30124/info
Microsoft Advisory: www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/953635.mspx
Microsoft Blog Post: blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2008/07/08/ vulnerability-in-microsoft-word-could-allow-remote-code-execution.aspx
DNS Vulnerability Found by a GSEC Student Three Years Ago!
Kudos to Ian Green! In January 2005 he submitted a paper for his GSEC certification that lays out in wonderful detail the very same vulnerability that is the subject of today's patching frenzy. Here is what Ian told us in an email today:
The DNS Spoofing vulnerability was discovered and reported to SANS during research for GSEC in January 2005. http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/dns/1567.php
Extract:
By observing these values of DNS queries over a period of time, the following patterns were noted:
- The DNS transaction ID always begins at 1 and is incremented by 1 for each subsequent DNS query; and
- The UDP source port of the query (which becomes the UDP destination port of the response) remains static for the entirety of a session (from startup to shutdown).
Like they say, "what is old is new, what is new is old"
Marcus H. Sachs
Director, SANS Internet Storm Center
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