Ok – so at least I wasn’t the only one to see Microsoft’s update to the security bulletin as downplaying the threat….
Of course, I don’t expect them to say…. “OH NO>>>> THE INTERNET WILL BE CRASHING AND BURNING…” But acknowledging that it is a very serious threat and there are few ways (outside of the unofficial patch) to be certain that you’re protected in some manner, shape, form would be nice.
I had hoped to get in another test of Windows 98 with yet another WMF viewer (tried Kodak imaging, and irfanview). So far I haven’t seen a way that the WMF exploits can work on Windows 98 SE. I’m running out of time before I have to run to some computer service appointments and maybe will be able to pick up again this afternoon/evening. Larry Seltzer had a post this morning that earlier versions of Windows might not be as vulnerable because they had no default WMF viewer, but with a default WMF viewer they may be susceptible. I’m still looking for a WMF viewer that makes the exploit possible on Windows 98 SE.
The Microsoft security bulletin on the WMF vulnerability has been updated to indicate that Microsoft expects to release an update for the issue in their regular patch release on January 10th. The first couple paragraphs strike me as a bit defensive. Explaining about their immediate mobilization of Incident Response and immediate work on a patch, in addition to the explanation of extensive testing of the patch in 23 languages….
I had hoped to do an article on metasploit in the not too distant future, but not as early as tonight…. However, I’ve made a couple of references to it in previous posts which, well, it would be nice if I’d already given a bit of information about metasploit in general. For starters, metasploit is considered a “framework” for exploit modules and payload modules. Much like real weapons, knives, guns…. there are good uses and there are bad uses. It can be used by a network/security auditor to check for vulnerable systems. It could also be used by a cracker to exploit systems remotely. There’s a fine line.
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 mentioned this in my summary yesterday morning as a possible workaround until there are patches for the WMF vulnerability that’s been big news the last week. I notice that incidents.org has mentioned it too as a possibility today. VMware has released VMPLayer as a free way of running premade virtual machines.
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.
Yesterday, when I was testing the WMF exploit against a Windows 98 virtual machine, I sent samples through virus total and the only antivirus product to detect each of them was “TheHacker” from hacksoft. This evening I was revisiting the exploit (with the new rule for metasploit) and saved 20 samples which I also tested with virustotal. The results this evening are better. This evening 4 antivirus products detected each one.
After my Windows 98 tests which failed to exploit the system with either the first or the second vulnerability, I started wondering how well the antivirus companies were doing in detecting this second exploit variation. I had setup and updated metasploit so I could test my Windows 98 SE install against the latest version of the exploit and with each connection to the locally hosted page I got a new random file. After I collected five of these I ran them through virustotal.com to see how well detection has come in just 24 hours.
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.