We can expect 7 updates next week from Microsoft on the monthly patch day for July. Four of the updates will be for Windows, and 3 for Microsoft Office. There will be at least one critical update for each. It’s expected that we’ll see an update for the Excel issues that have been talked about the last few weeks. There are a number of publicly known Internet Explorer vulnerabilities, but it’s not known if Microsoft has prepared patches for those yet. It should be noted that many times 1 patch will cover a number of issues. This is commonly seen with Internet Explorer cumulative updates where several vulnerabilities are addressed with one update.
Category: Windows Software
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Windows 98 and ME in final days of support (6 by my count)
July 11th will mark the end of Microsoft’s support for Windows 98 and ME. Which means that there will be no further security updates for those systems after that date. In SOME ways, those systems may find comfort in the security through obscurity approach as much malware MAY not run on those systems, but that’s kind of a risky angle to play. For those that are willing to experiment…
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Sophos suggests…. for more safety – get a Mac
Analyzing the state of the computer world…. Sophos Antivirus has suggested that consumers consider a Mac for their next PC if they’re concerned about the increasing swarm of malware targetting Windows PC’s. The main point being there are no ACTIVE malware threats against Mac systems and Windows still seems to be increasingly targetted. Mac will likely be less malware prone for the foreseeable future. No, MAC users – that is NOT an excuse to ignore Security updates!!!!
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Windows XP and IPP printers
I really like printers with their own built in print server. They can be plugged into the network and some operating systems can just find them. Unfortunately most of the time Windows doesn’t just find an IPP printer. One tool that can be handy for such a time as this is a free tool like softperfect network scanner or you could substitute your own tool in to find where the printer is on the network. If you’re lucky enough to have designed the network or setup the printer yourself, you may know. But, in my job I may have information on some parts of a customers network, but many times I’m called in after the fact and get the “I need that network printer to work on this desktop” kind of assignment.
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Fasten your seatbelts – Browser vulnerability a day to be announced in July
I hope there aren’t too many browser developers that have planned on taking July off….. I ran across browserfun.blogspot.com where it is planned to release information on a web browser vulnerability EACH DAY for the month of July. This comes to us from HD Moore of Metasploit. Judging from This securityfocus article, most of the vulnerabilities may just lead to a browser crash, but some seem to be remote code execution vulnerabilities. Microsoft Internet Explorer is where they found most of them, but other browsers were NOT immune and did find at least one remotely exploitable vulnerability to gain remote access for each browser tested.
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OpenOffice.org security update
Version 2.0.3 of OpenOffice.org has been released. It includes quite a few bugfixes, including three security related fixes. The security vulnerabilities were apparently found in an internal audit. One of the improvements in 2.0.3 is an integrated update check, to be able to check for available updates directly from within OpenOffice. I think this is an important area to be improved.
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Your own custom BSOD
Do you tire of XP’s blue screen text…. is it too drab and dry? Well you too can spice up your blue screen text…. This is not for the faint of heart when it comes to tinkering with “important files”…. But all you need is Windows XP and resourcehacker (Free). fluxiontech.com has the tutorial. Happy modifying your ntoskrnl.exe …….. (Please follow their directions and save it to another file name so you’ve got your original…) Then just make a change to boot.ini to point to the new kernel and you too have a customized BSOD.
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Intelliadmin – free disable usb storage tool
For Windows system administrators that have sweated over the perils of usb drives and memory sticks…. Intelliadmin has a tool for you. It’s a small utility that will allow to remotely disable usb drives over the LAN. It won’t affect usb mice/keyboards – just usb storage. So, if your network security policy doesn’t like USB storage you can easily use this to make sure those devices don’t work on plugin.
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Exploits a plenty – IE / Excel (Firefox?)
There are a number of vulnerabilities that are currently unpatched, but have working publicly known exploits for Excel (*2) and Internet Explorer (2 vulnerabilities here as well.) Proof of Concept code has been released for both the Excel and Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. This means, with the code publicly available, it won’t be long before it’s bundled into other malware delivery structures…. You might look at alternative browsers, BUT…. be forewarned that one of these vulnerabilities appears to work on a fully patched install of Mozilla-Firefox. (According to Sans – the Secunia code doesn’t – but the full disclosure exploit code does affect Firefox.) I’ve seen word of early 1.5.0.5 builds being available – I wonder if that will be modified to fix this issue?
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Microsoft security roundup
OK – there have been a number of Excel problems floating around in the last week – week and a half. Securiteam blog has a FAQ on the Excel 0-day vulnerabilities with Excel and Excel Viewer Incidents.org kindly gives us a scoresheet documenting the three different vulnerabilities that have been recently exploited. I have not thoroughly read details, but suspect that avoiding opening unexpected xls attachments would likely be a GOOD preventative measure. If you take the attitude… “oh junk mail…. ooo attachment – wonder whats in there – let’s see…” then you’re likely already stuck by a few viruses.