Microsoft To Issue Emergency Fix For Windows .LNK Flaw

Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft will issue an out-of-band patch on Monday for a critical vulnerability in all of the current versions of Windows. The company didn't identify which flaw it will be patching, but the description of the vulnerability is a close match to the LNK flaw that attackers have been exploiting for several weeks now, most notably with the Stuxnet malware. The advance notification from Microsoft on Friday said that the company is patching a critical vulnerability that is being actively exploited in the wild and affects all supported Windows platforms. The LNK flaw in the Windows shell was first identified earlier this month when researchers discovered the Stuxnet worm spreading from infected USB drives to PCs. Stuxnet has turned out to be a rather interesting piece of malware as it not only uses the LNK zero day vulnerability to spread, but it had components that were signed using a legitimate digital certificate belonging to Realtek, a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer."

Comments

Is copy-and-pasting"writing"?

[Two99Point80]

This is just a copy (minus links) of the article at Threatpost. How about at least crediting the source?

The really interesting bit

[HangingChad]

Stuxnet has turned out to be a rather interesting piece of malware as it not only uses the LNK zero day vulnerability to spread, but it had components that were signed using a legitimate digital certificate belonging to Realtek, a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer.

How do you suppose the crackers got a hold of Realtek's digital certificate? Seems to imply a level of sophistication that goes beyond most virus writers, many of whom are industry professionals these days. A government-backed organization maybe or well-funded industrial espionage.

Behold the true face of cyberwar!

Re:The really interesting bit

[alphatel]

Agreed, who cares what the vulnerability is - exploits are never-ending. The digitally signed certificate is a sure-fire method of defeating a number of defense mechanisms and penetrate the MS core even further. As always, the benefit to the code writer is that any MS OS can be fooled, including server systems.