March 2010 - Microsoft Patch Tuesday Diary
Overview of the March 2010 Microsoft Patches and their status.
| # | Affected | Contra Indications | Known Exploits | Microsoft rating | ISC rating(*) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| clients | servers | |||||
| MS10-016 | Vulnerability in Windows Movie Maker Could Allow Remote Code Execution | |||||
|
Moviemaker: |
KB 975561 | no known exploits. | Severity: Important Exploitability: 1 |
Important | Important | |
| MS10-017 | Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution | |||||
| Excel: CVE-2010-0257 CVE-2010-0258 CVE-2010-0260 CVE-2010-0261 CVE-2010-0262 CVE-2010-0263 CVE-2010-0264 |
KB 980150 | no known exploits. | Severity: Important Exploitability: 1,2,1,1,2,1,1 |
Critical | Important | |
We appreciate updates
US based customers can call Microsoft for free patch related support on 1-866-PCSAFETY
- We use 4 levels:
- PATCH NOW: Typically used where we see immediate danger of exploitation. Typical environments will want to deploy these patches ASAP. Workarounds are typically not accepted by users or are not possible. This rating is often used when typical deployments make it vulnerable and exploits are being used or easy to obtain or make.
- Critical: Anything that needs little to become "interesting" for the dark side. Best approach is to test and deploy ASAP. Workarounds can give more time to test.
- Important: Things where more testing and other measures can help.
- Less Urgent: Typically we expect the impact if left unpatched to be not that big a deal in the short term. Do not forget them however.
- The difference between the client and server rating is based on how you use the affected machine. We take into account the typical client and server deployment in the usage of the machine and the common measures people typically have in place already. Measures we presume are simple best practices for servers such as not using outlook, MSIE, word etc. to do traditional office or leisure work.
- The rating is not a risk analysis as such. It is a rating of importance of the vulnerability and the perceived or even predicted threat for affected systems. The rating does not account for the number of affected systems there are. It is for an affected system in a typical worst-case role.
- Only the organization itself is in a position to do a full risk analysis involving the presence (or lack of) affected systems, the actually implemented measures, the impact on their operation and the value of the assets involved.
- All patches released by a vendor are important enough to have a close look if you use the affected systems. There is little incentive for vendors to publicize patches that do not have some form of risk to them
--
John Bambenek
bambenek at gmail /dot/ com
Vodafone Android Phone: Complete with Mariposa Malware
Panda Security has a post up on one of their employees buying a brand new Android phone from Vodafone and discovering it was spreading Mariposa. It didn't infect the phone proper, but it did have autoexec.inf and autoexec.bat files designed to infect whatever Windows machine the phone was plugged into via USB cable. Unlike the Engergizer story from yesterday, this one is happening now. Standard USB defenses apply, don't automatically execute autoexec.bat/inf files from USB devices. This Microsoft KB article discusses how to disable the "Autoplay" functionality that leads to this problem.
This leads to the interesting question, why not just infect the phones? The technology is certainly there to write malware that is phone specific. We won't see mass infection of phones (or even better, a cell-phone botnet) likely until commerce is much more common on phones. Malware is driven by the desire of profit and once it becomes profitable, we'll see exploitation. The problem is, that these slimmed down devices make it difficult to configure in security. Only a few cell phone types even have the option of cell phone antivirus software. The clock is ticking on that threat.
--
John Bambenek
bambenek at gmail /dot/ com
Energizer Malware
We received several emails today about the US-CERT analysis of Trojan horse software found in an application designed for a battery recharger. Our assessment is that due to the dates involved (2007 and 2008) this is likely related to the rash of malware we reported a couple of years ago that was found on digital photo frames, iPods, GPS devices, and other consumer products. If any of our readers have any additional technical information or observations to share about this case, please use the comment feature below.
Marcus H. Sachs
Director, SANS Internet Storm Center
UPDATE: Due to the high demand and number of notifications from our ISC readers, be aware that yesterday new Nmap and Metasploit modules to detect and exploit this trojan were released.
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