Author Topic: New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found  (Read 829 times)

Mr Smith

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« on: 21 November 2002, 05:56 »
I just thought of something funny. Microsoft is reliable in that you can always rely on them to find another vulnerability in their products. They
will never let you down in that regard.  

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11/20/021120hnmsflaw.xml?s=IDGNS

New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found

By Paul Roberts
November 20, 2002 4:39 pm PT

 LAS VEGAS -- Microsoft Corp. issued a software patch Wednesday for what it described as a "critical" new security vulnerability affecting most versions of its Windows operating systems and certain versions of the Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser.

The security flaw affects the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), a collection of components that provide database access for Windows platforms, according to a statement from Foundstone Inc., a software vulnerability management company in Mission Viejo, California, that discovered the flaw.

The vulnerability involves what's known as an "unchecked buffer" in the Remote Data Services (RDS) component of MDAC. The faulty code is in a function called the RDS Data Stub which is used to pull information from incoming HTTP requests and create RDS commands, according to Microsoft.

An attacker could exploit the security weakness by sending an improperly formatted HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) request to the Data Stub that contained a surplus of data, causing the buffer to overflow and the attackers data to be placed and run on the affected machine.

The vulnerability affects certain versions of Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows Me, Microsoft said, and potentially other versions of its operating system. It said Windows XP users are not affected and need take no action.

The vulnerability received a severity rating of "critical" from Microsoft, the highest possible rating under the companys new vulnerability rating system, which was announced Tuesday. Microsoft defines critical vulnerabilities as those "whose exploitation could allow the propagation of an Internet worm such as Code Red or Nimda without user action."

The security hole is particularly menacing because of the large number of systems that are vulnerable to it and because of the ease with which existing worms such as Code Red or Nimda could be modified to take advantage of the newly disclosed flaw, said Stuart McClure, Foundstone's president and chief technical officer.

"What makes it really quite dangerous is that it can be easily added to a worm," McClure said.

"It's very much in line with Code Red and Nimda because of the attack vectors and the ways that it attacks. But with this vulnerability both the server and client component can be attacked, as opposed to Code Red and Nimda, which basically exploited server-based vulnerabilities and didnt take advantage of a browser based vulnerability like this," he said.

Foundstone discovered the vulnerability in August and disclosed the information to Microsoft at that time, McClure said.

The vulnerability affects MDAC versions 2.1, 2.5 and 2.6, according to Microsoft. MDAC is installed and implemented by default in Windows 2000, and within the Windows NT 4.0 option pack.

Machines running Internet Explorer versions 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 are also affected by the new vulnerability, Microsoft said.

Earlier versions of either MDAC or Internet Explorer that are no longer supported may also be vulnerable, the software maker said.

Customers who are potentially affected are advised to review the appropriate security bulletin, MS02-065, on Microsoft's Web site.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
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TB

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #1 on: 21 November 2002, 06:09 »
Now I'm even gladder that I use Mozilla. 'Nuff said.

avello500

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #2 on: 21 November 2002, 06:48 »
i just installed mozilla 1 hour before reading this.
nothing like hearing the bullet pass right next to your ear.
How can you say im crazy? You wouldnt know what crazy was if Charles Manson was eating Fruit Loops on your front porch.  -- mike muir/suicidal tendencies

RudeCat7

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #3 on: 21 November 2002, 06:53 »
This could just be another way of scaring people into "upgrading" to XP. They REALLY want everyone to use XP (could it be to gain more control over your computer?)
*meow!* I didn't say Linux was easier, I said it was better, Dumbass!

mobrien_12

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #4 on: 21 November 2002, 10:02 »
I don't think this particular one is an attempt to scare ppl into using XP, although they certainly want to do that in general.

Scotty said "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."  That certainly applies to IIS, MSIE, and Outlook, where we get security advisories on a regular basis.
In brightest day, in darkest night, no evil shall escape my sight....

Kintaro

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #5 on: 21 November 2002, 10:19 »
Well im waiting for a good Buffer overflow in IIS 5.0 or 6.0 or whateverthefuck www.unixsucks.com is running!

Crunchy(Cracked)Butter

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #6 on: 21 November 2002, 16:12 »
Yet Microsoft's share price will still go up with this news!

preacher

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #7 on: 21 November 2002, 22:23 »
If you carefully read the above article, you can see that Foundstone discovered this bug back in August. Ok, well it is November now, so for 4 months, there was an unfixed, yet known, security bug in IE. Just imagine if it took that long to fix problems in linux.
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pkd_lives

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #8 on: 21 November 2002, 22:44 »
quote:
Originally posted by ThePreacher:
If you carefully read the above article, you can see that Foundstone discovered this bug back in August. Ok, well it is November now, so for 4 months, there was an unfixed, yet known, security bug in IE. Just imagine if it took that long to fix problems in linux.



Such a world as that cannot exist, surely. It would be a nightmare, we would all run computers that could be easily attacked....oh, well if people had that easy backdoor access to computers we would all be so vulnerab..le...erm, if bugs went unfixed for that long then systems would be so unstable that....ARRRGGHHH...let me out.
Tough - Adapt or die : Read The Fucking Manual.

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voidmain

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #9 on: 22 November 2002, 01:12 »
They have just released a patch. Yes, apparently it was such a surprise that Microsoft actually fixed something (even though the bug has been in all versions of IE since the beginning of time) it was just on CNN to download the patch!
Someone please remove this account. Thanks...

Refalm

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #10 on: 22 November 2002, 17:33 »
quote:
X11 / BOB: The croc hunter: Well im waiting for a good Buffer overflow in IIS 5.0 or 6.0 or whateverthefuck www.unixsucks.com is running!


The site www.unixsucks.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.

Kintaro

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #11 on: 22 November 2002, 17:37 »
Yet he brags about the features IIS 6.0 bares. Wierd eh?

SpeeDFreaK

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New, serious Microsoft vulnerability found
« Reply #12 on: 23 November 2002, 10:23 »
You know it gets bad when they have to have their own defcon-ish severity scale.
"George Bush says 'we are losing the war on drugs'. Well you know what that implies? There's a war going on, and people on drugs are winning it! Well what does that tell you about drugs? Some smart, creative motherfuckers on that side."  --Bill Hicks