There’s been an update to the unofficial patch for the WMF (Windows MetaFile) vulnerability. The main change appears to be some options to allow for quiet installation (unattended) to help administrators in large environments try to roll the patch out in automated login scripts/etc.
It can be found here or at the incidents.org site.
I’ve seen breathless headlines that say “Windows PCs face ‘huge’ virus threat; Affects every MICROSOFT OS shipped since 1990…” and really would like to try to clarify (again) what the situation is. Yes, the bug or vulnerability that’s currently being exploited exists as far back as Windows 3.0, but as far as I can tell there is not an active, current exploit that is taking advantage of this flaw in earlier versions of windows. Currently the exploit only seems to affect Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.
Ok, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the results of the tests against the first version of the WMF (Windows Metafile) zero day exploit that’s now up to 4 or 5 days or so… Windows 98 is listed as being vulnerable, but there are no patches or workarounds currently available for Windows 98 users. I was mostly curious to see if current exploits could wreck a Windows 98 system. The answer at this point is not that I can see.
I’ve spent some more effort on trying to infect Windows 98 SE in a virtual machine with some of the exploit samples I can find. The first attempt was at a website with the .wmf download. No luck infecting the system there. Then, I’ve loaded up the image and visited kyeu dot info/WMF/ and tried each of the files there. I don’t have a zip handler in my Windows 98 SE image so that didn’t get tested, but I’m getting nowhere here. Gif opens with Explorer and gives a red x to indicate a broken image, the text file opens as a binary file viewed in a text editor, the htm file does the same only in explorer (I see what I’d usually see if I tried to open a binary file in a web browser…) The avi opens with Media Player and complains about it being an incompatible format.
Most of the talk on the WMF zero-day has centered on Windows XP, 2000 and 2003. The unofficial patch is available for those three platforms. Microsoft’s (eventual) patch will likely be for those as well. Incidents.org had a comment in one of their posts that this would be a “watershed moment” for Windows 98/ME and that those users should upgrade immediately as there is little/no hope for a patch.
I’m putting this under the Windows tech support category because I’ve used this on a boot cd before to do the same for Windows as I’m about to describe for Linux. I need to clean up and organize my hard drive(s). But when it comes to actually deleting things you really do want to get the biggest bang for the buck and go after the biggest files first. I remember an old Windows 95 utility I think it was called space Hog or something like that (more space 95??) Anyway, it would scan the disc and show the files sorted by size. Under linux (KDE desktop), there’s a similar (in many ways better) utility called kdirstat.
Since there’s been quite a bit of flux the last couple of days I thought I’d try to “reset” the situation and give a general overview of where we stand now with regards to the recent WMF zero-day exploit.
1st there is a vulnerability in the way Windows renders WMF (Windows MetaFile) image files that makes possible an exploitable buffer overflow allowing remote execution. There are at least two exploits for this vulnerability and it is not necessary for the wmf to have a name ending in .wmf (it could masquerade as jpg for instance.) The specially crafted WMF could be in a web page, email (html email), or other document. There are many possible vectors of entry for this.
So, I’ve spent a bit of time talking about flightgear. Here are a couple extra resources that I want to “bookmark” here. There is a Good unofficial how-to here. (Mostly linux flightgear oriented. Also, the flightgear scenery is available here. The link is to a grid covered world map. Clicking on a grid quadrant downloads scenery for that quadrant.
This is really the same zero-day wmf vulnerability, but there is a twist. It’s been found that Lotus Notes v. 6.x and up are vulnerable to the Windows Meta File (WMF) exploit that’s making the rounds. Probably not surprising given that there are reports of many vectors of attack, not JUST the web browser. What makes this one noteworthy is that it is vulnerable EVEN WITH THE regsvr32 WORKAROUND. The only other solution that’s been reported thus far is DEP (Data Execution Protection) with supported DEP hardware.
I notice that the Sunbelt Blog has some instructions up for blocking the zero-day Windows Meta File (WMF) exploit with their newly acquired kerio firewall. (Free or full version.) Either version can use an add-on rule from bleeding-edge snort (intrusion detection signatures…) Instructions in the link above on how to implement the rule addition.