Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft as a Company => Topic started by: Mr Smith on 21 November 2002, 05:56
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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 (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.
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Now I'm even gladder that I use Mozilla. 'Nuff said.
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i just installed mozilla 1 hour before reading this.
nothing like hearing the bullet pass right next to your ear.
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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?)
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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.
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Well im waiting for a good Buffer overflow in IIS 5.0 or 6.0 or whateverthefuck www.unixsucks.com (http://www.unixsucks.com) is running!
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Yet Microsoft's share price will still go up with this news!
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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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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.
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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!
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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 (http://www.unixsucks.com) is running!
The site www.unixsucks.com (http://www.unixsucks.com) is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.
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Yet he brags about the features IIS 6.0 bares. Wierd eh?
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You know it gets bad when they have to have their own defcon-ish severity scale.