Hot on the heels of a Flash Player critical vulnerability, Adobe has released a security bulletin outlining a critical vulnerability in all Adobe Reader and Acrobat versions prior to version 8.1.3. Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.1.2 and earlier versions. These vulnerabilities would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. Acrobat and Reader version 9 is not vulnerable to these particular flaws. A few interesting things to note here. No patch for Acrobat/Reader 7 and earlier has been released. Additionally, the update is available only by moving to a new version of Acrobat/Reader, either version 8.1.3 or 9. This may cause significant pain and[…]
Category: software
This from BetaNews (link opens in new window): Giving a nod to developers who’ve apparently given a lot of feedback, as well as “certain commercials,” Microsoft’s platform chief Steven Sinofsky acknowledged that perhaps User Account Control in Windows Vista may have been…a little annoying. In turn, Windows 7 has additional UAC settings. Fortunately for my own sanity, I haven’t had to jump through any hoops with UAC to get my code working, but that’s mostly because I deal with server-side code now. While the developer perspective is interesting, it’s really the user perspective that’s important to me, as someone who is concerned with the overall state of desktop security. Developers are not only in the minority, we also don’t have[…]
Bulletin MS08-067 has been released along with its fix, and it’s a doozy. By releasing it outside of a “patch Tuesday” it is apparent that Microsoft wants to see this fixed as soon as possible. It affects every version of Windows from 2000 on through the latest beta of Windows 7. This is a remote code execution vulnerability. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system remotely. On Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability over RPC without authentication to run arbitrary code. It is possible that this vulnerability could be used in the crafting of a wormable exploit. If successfully exploited, an attacker[…]
Adobe has released an advisory about a series of critical vulnerabilities in flash player 9.0.124.0 and earlier. The fix is to install the just-released flash player 10.0.12.36. The interesting thing is that the architecture of some security related things has changed wholeheartedly with player 10 – so things that used to work with 9, may stop working with 10. Potential vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Flash Player 9.0.124.0 and earlier that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits these potential vulnerabilities to bypass Flash Player security controls. Adobe recommends users update to the most current version of Flash Player available for their platform. Due to the possibility that these security enhancements and changes may impact existing content, customers are[…]
If you ever find yourself in front of a public computer connected to the Internet and are concerned about the security of the path between you and a website you wish to visit, a SOCKS proxy can come in handy. SOCKS proxies generally allow you to “bounce” a TCP connection off another server transparently– basically instructing another computer to make a connection on your behalf. When used in combination with Secure Shell (SSH), it can form an encrypted tunnel that insulates you from anyone attempting to grab traffic off the wire. The following is a simple step-by-step tutorial about how to do this. You will need: -Putty SSH client: http://www.putty.org -An account on an Internet-accessible server that accepts SSH connections[…]
If you used to use nessus for vulnerability scanning, but stopped when Tenable released 3.0 under a non-GPL license, you’re in luck. OpenVAS is a fork of nessus 2.0 and uses .nasl files. However, the vulnerability test feeds (NVTs) seem to be lacking the same breadth as those released by Tenable. However, many .nasl files are open and released by third-parties, so you could add them to your scanner. Nessus is one of the better vulnerability scanners I’ve used for raw data. It doesn’t do any of the fancy dashboard or report generating that some of the others do, so it tends to get a bad rap. However, if you just need a scanner that finds potential vulnerabilities, Nessus gets[…]