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Code Posted For New IE Exploit
PC World is reporting that two days ago hackers posted code for a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer that could allow drive-by takeover of a vulnerable PC. Security companies say that no exploits using the "daxctle" vulnerability have yet been found in the wild, but they are taking the new threat seriously. Symantec calls the bug "critical" and Secunia rates it highly critical, the most severe rating. The hackers who posted the sample code, xsec.org, refer to it as a "0day" exploit. The article quotes another security expert who calls this label "a stretch."
Update: 09/17 18:00 GMT by C :Fixed link to XSec. Thanks for pointing that one out, folks.
That's xsec.org not xsec.com
Another ActiveX exploit. *yawn*
If you want to be safe in IE, turn off ActiveX from untrusted sites. Hasn't this been known since day one?
News would be if ActiveX was tested and found to be safe.
Have you read my journal today?
OK, I'll answer the question. About 75% of web users still use IE.
If you are a sys admin, or a web admin, Deal.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
The reason it's not a 0day exploit is because some other dude already discovered the vulnerability, but didn't disclose it to the public? And that second guy is sitting on another 3 or 4 vulnerabilities?
I'm sorry, what's the definition of 0day exploit these days? If not exploit code for which there is no patch available, then what?
Can we now use "responsible disclosure" to argue away the fact that actual computer systems are at risk of being exploited right here and now, by saying "yeah, well, you got rooted and all, but we knew about that bug, so it doesn't count, even though we don't have a patch yet."?
Can we now take comments that the programmers left in the code ("// does this work?" "/* coded while druk */" "//BUGBUG") as an excuse to completely ignore actual vulnerabilities?
And hey, if TWO researches come up with this vulnerability seemingly independently, what are the chances of the exploit already circulating in the black hat community? Close to 100%?
By my definition you've got your negative-day and your zero-day exploits. Negative-day exploits; no patch yet. Zero-day; the patch has just been issued, so might as well give your exploit to scriptkiddies and botnet operators to use on the systems that don't patch early/often enough. Obviously, a negative-day exploit usually isn't going to be used on a large scale, because your average blackhatter wants to keep it in his toolkit to attack well-patched systems; after all, it's what gives him (and his leet skillz) an edge. Once patchday arrives, you might as well give it to some noobs, because they might be interested in unpatched targets, while a leet blackhatter is not.
So no, it's not a "stretch" to call it 0day. It's negative day, even.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
OK, smarty, I will explain the difference to you. On one hand we have Firefox, which is a piece of software that is free in both senses, and you can use it, or not use it, or delete from your system, or whatever you want. On the other hand we have Internet Explorer, which is forced upon you via "leveraging," you cannot remove, and you must use because of contrived tie-ins to fundamental system functions.
If there is an exploit for Firefox, I can shrug my shoulders and use any of a dozen other browsers to look at web pages until it gets fixed. Or I can choose to continue using Firefox anyway, despite the risk. It's my choice. However, if there is an exploit in Internet Explorer, I am just plain screwed. I can't switch the goddamn thing off or remove it. Hell, there are plenty of applications and services that will gleefully launch IE of their own accord and start loading internets from God knows where, and there's no way for me to stop it. Because of Microsoft's predatory practices, I have no choice in the matter (except to abandon Windows altogether, which is also not an option -- see how all my choices have been removed?). You're damn right people are a lot more upset when exploits turn up in IE. We are required to suffer the fallout from them.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Huh? If you don't have any specific reason to trust it, it's untrusted. I would have thunk that's Internet 101.
what ever happened to exploits ( be it virus, trojan, whatever ) that cased some REAL damage?
All this whimy-ass 'botnet' garbage needs to end. We need something that totally kills windows when you get infected. Get the people pissed off enough to force microsoft into doing something.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you look at Firefox security bugs and IE security bugs, you'll see that there are more Firefox bugs than MSIE bugs in the exploit lists. There is, however, a big difference.
When Microsoft finds a security hole themselves, they don't tell anyone, and they don't release a patch. They fix it in the tree for the next release of the OS. The only time they release a patch is when someone else finds the bug. The reason they do this is because if they release a patch, people will "bindiff" it against the previous version and find what is changed so that they can make exploits to use against unpatched users. You can't realistically "bindiff" XP vs. Vista, so they can obscure their security updates inside Vista.
Firefox instead will issue patches no matter who finds them. This is why Firefox appears to have more bugs - you always see them get fixed.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager