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New IM Worm Exploiting WMF Vulnerability
An anonymous reader writes "After less than a four days after original mailing list posting there are reports about a new Instant Messaging worm exploiting unpatched Windows Metafile vulnerability. This worm is using MSN to spread, reports Viruslist.com."
There is information available on temporary fixes from the following sites
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?rss&storyid=996
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/#00000760
http://www.grc.com/sn/notes-020.htm
be aware the runnable patch is completely unofficial, the only action microsoft suggest is unregistering a vulnerable dll which only mitigates the most common method of exploitation while not fixing the underlying problem.
NFI how long it will take microsoft to have an official patch out, but from the sans site, it doesnt look promising that it will appear soon.
use gaim, the image support is terrible you will be safe
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
You MUST mean MSN Messenger.
Netherlands being the place where it first appeared, and being from Belgium myself, I can say that everybody here simply says 'MSN' when they mean 'MSN Messenger'.
It's more common in europe anyway to use MSN instead of other popular IM networks used thoughout the USA and other countries. IM was never popular with non-geek computer users here and when broadband internet (with a fixed price/month) arrived most teenagers (the primary group of users in europe) all started using MSN Messenger.
Dependency hell? =>
See discussion list at3
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?p=14305
also check out FSecure's blog:
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/
Since the first exploit came to light, H.D.Moore of the Metasploit project has reworked the original package they did. The new exploit spits out exploit WMF files that come:
- with a random size;
- no
.wmf extension, (.jpg), but could be any other image extension actually;
- a random piece of junk in front of the bad call; carefully crafted to be larger than the MTU on an ethernet network;
- a number of possible calls to run the exploit are listed in the source;
- a random trailer
This makes it rather hard for antivirus and IDS sigs to detect it, though Snort and the A/V people are working late over their holidays to improve detection.SANS/ISC have provided excellent continued summaries of events around this. Here's their FAQ on the issue.
This is looking truly horrible. On Tuesday morning zillions of Windows desktops will be fired up for the first time in a week or two. This thing's already in widespread use by a number of malware distribution networks for the usual reasons. As such it's a nightmare for network and system admins with Windows machines to look after (and us security people trying to provide advice & assistance for them...) But the stealth nightmare is that this is an absolute jackpot for the less visible targetted attacks, such as those emanating from China for the past couple of years (google around, Slashdot and Schneier have covered this as well as many other places.) There are also the opportunistic types who see an easy opportunity to pwn some key machines where they work, say. I will stick my neck out here and make a prediction. Virtually all organisations with Windows machines are effectively wide open to total compromise by a reasonably informed person. That means much of the IT dept as well as significant numbers of the 'interested poweruser' types, developers with a casual interest in security,.. anyone who's heard of this and is capable of running the findingm, running and using the new exploit, basically. Of course we're all tweaking our IDSes and antivirus, locking things down as tight as possible in the 48 hours remaining, but... *shudder*
For ten years I've been waiting for Microsoft's luck to run out. This is about #3 on my list of catastrophic MS incidents. There aren't many ways things could be worse.
It will be a good time to be running Linux on work machine, though :)
It's unofficial, but it works.
http://www.hexblog.com/2005/12/wmf_vuln.html
There seems to be a first fix.
There is now a "Windows WMF Metafile Vulnerability HotFix" available from Ilfak Guilfanov. Have a look here http://www.hexblog.com/2005/12/wmf_vuln.html
The problem - and the fix - has been discussed also at GRC.com's Security Now podcast. Check out this link http://www.grc.com/sn/notes-020.htm
My customers use IM. My coworkers use IM. I use IM.
IM is potentially the most influential communication medium since email.
I have had quite a few of my customers tell me that "The simple fact that I can reach you via IM, has made your company's service better than any other partner."
IM is "instant", offers logging of communications and doesn't require somebody to check their email (it pops up on their screen). In many ways it is a better communication tool than other options: phone, email or fax. You can even use it to see if somebody is in the office yet, or out to lunch. I could go on and on...
Feel free to not use it; the rest of the modern business world won't be joining you.
Seven Sony rootkits,
Six keystroke loggers,
Five porn diallers!
Four Exploit.WMFs,
Three Mytobs,
Two Bifrose-Ds,
And a homepage stuck on goatse.
Does your website have an image on it? It can be exploited that way. Does your email render html, even with scripting turned off? It can be exploited that way. A few trusted sites have been compromised with this exploit. Some seedier as networks (with hundreds or thousands of affiliates) are using this to generate cash. There is no patch for Windows ME, 98, or 95 and there will never be as these OSes are unsupported. These systems will ALWAYS have this vulnerability.
Imaginine if someone uploaded this to MySpace (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details ?q=&url=www.myspace.com/), as they allow full html formatting, embed, iframes and all kinds of crazy crap. One exploit on a popular blog will cause A LOT of damage.
Yeah I've been starving them, teasing them, singing off key. Me may mah mo, me mo ma me.
Twelve IRC bots spying,
Eleven worms-a-wriggling,
Ten Paypal phishes,
Nine ActiveX holes,
Eight Blaster variants,
Seven Sony rootkits,
Six keystroke loggers,
Five porn diallers!
Four Exploit.WMFs,
Three Mytobs,
Two Bifrose-Ds,
And a homepage stuck on goatse.
(You, ettlz, rock.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
As soon as Windows is dead and "insert linux distro here" gets their market share we will still be hearing about the latest and greatest worms for that distro.
Pure speculation. There is absolutely no reason to believe that market share is the cause of low security. Shitty programmers with little or no Q/A, and a huge festering codebase which is continually patched together with duck tape to keep it going, along with a refusal to force 3rd party vendors to release software which runs properly (IE doesn't require local admin to run) causes security holes. For example, TOAD, some sql development software for Oracle, requires, REQUIRES, full write privileges to the directory it is installed in, or it refuses to run. This is mainstream software, and is used probably by millions of developers. But it still places fucking ini files in the install directory.
Don't blame Windows lack of security, it's more its market share, transparency between versions to blame and the lack of brains on the end user's parts.
Why would an end user suspect that opening a picture file could cause a virus to be installed on to their computer? Windows doesn't have *bad* security, Windows has no security. In order to have a useable system you MUST run Windows as local administrator. Thus every program you run has the power to format your hard drive if it likes. Every process which is run and has a flaw has the potential to fuck your computer up.
Transparency between versions? How does that cause poor security? Shouldn't the fact that MS recycles about 90% of their code between releases give them a lot more resources to track down those HUGE, GAPING holes in their OS?
FOR CHRISTS SAKE! Windows can be infected by a virus just by having certain things displayed on the screen! What an insane piece of shit it must be.