zero-day

Hackers have launched attacks targeting an unpatched flaw in Microsoft PowerPoint, the company warned Thursday.

The vulnerability, which affects Microsoft Office 2000 SP3, 2002 SP3, and 2003 SP3, can be exploited by getting a person to open a PowerPoint file rigged for the attack. When the file is opened, PowerPoint will access an invalid object in memory. That then allows an attacker to remotely execute code on the system.

In a security advisory, Microsoft said that at present, attacks are not widespread but are tailored to affect specific victims.

"Microsoft is investigating new reports of a vulnerability in Microsoft … Read more

Microsoft is investigating reports of a flaw in the WordPad Text Converter for Word 97 files, the company said on Tuesday. A Microsoft blog stated "we are aware of very limited and targeted attacks seeking to exploit this vulnerability."

On Wednesday security researchers reported finding a zero-day flaw affecting Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.

According to Microsoft Security Advisory 960906, the flaw only affects users of Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. This issue does not affect Windows XP Service Pack 3, … Read more

One flaw not addressed in yesterday's Patch Tuesday is a heap overflow within the XML parser reported on Wednesday by Bojan Zdrnja of the SANS Internet Storm Center.

The exploit in the wild on Wednesday creates an XML tag, then waits 6 seconds in an attempt to thwart antivirus engines. The exploit could then crash the browser and run malicious code when the browser is restarted. The user must be running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, and using Internet Explorer 7.

Zdrnja writes that "at this point in time, it does not appear to be wildly used, … Read more

In this week's Security Bites podcast, Robert Vamosi speaks with Ryan Naraine, security evangelist for Kaspersky and Zero Day blogger for ZDNet, about malicious software.

Naraine recently spoke at a conference on emerging security threats sponsored by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center about the increasing risks of malware on social networks, such as Facebook pages that to lead people to Google pages with additional links to malware sites (a two-step infection process), and the more straightforward approach of Facebook being used for botnets.

In this podcast, Naraine and Vamosi talk about the changing nature of threats today and … Read more

Initial information suggests that Internet attacks on Georgian Web sites over the last two weeks are the work of kids, according to one researcher, while another says the intensity of these attacks is short-lived when compared with attacks in Estonia last year.

In an e-mail to CNET News, Gadi Evron, founder of the Zero Day Emergency Response Team, said that "although the impact on their Web sites is clear, I believe this may end up being just some kids who got overexcited, with Georgia being ill-prepared to say the least. "

Posting on CircleID, Evron wrote that there are … Read more

According to Tipping Point's Zero Day Initiative, the vulnerability, which it rates as critical, was reported within the first five hours of Firefox 3's release.

"Once the vulnerability was verified in TippingPoint's DVLabs and acquired from the researcher, the vulnerability was promptly reported to the Mozilla security team," said a representative.

Although the Zero Day Initiative team does not offer specifics until the vendor has a chance to patch it, the blog post did say this vulnerability, which also affects Firefox 2, requires … Read more

On Thursday, Zero Day Initiative announced four flaws affecting two instant-messaging applications, three affecting Cerulean Studios Trillian Pro, and one affecting IBM Lotus Sametime. Zero Day Initiative is a part of TippingPoint and is controversial in that it pays researchers for finding flaws.

The first flaw in Trillian affects the header parsing code for the msn protocol and could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. The advisory states "when processing the X-MMS-IM-FORMAT header, certain attributes are copied into a buffer located on the stack without any length verification which can eventually lead to code execution with the privileges … Read more

Zero-day exploit codes targeting Yahoo and AOL instant-messenger services could put frequent IM users at risk to new attacks.

A non-vendor disclosed vulnerability within Yahoo Messenger has been exploited by two different code releases Wednesday. This is the third security glitch for Yahoo Messenger in as many months. There is no workaround or patch available yet for these exploits.

A second non-vendor disclosed vulnerability in AOL Instant Messenger targets how users are notified of new IMs. Security vendor Secunia recommends that current AIM users disable that option until a patch is available.

ZDNet blogger Ryan Naraine has more information and … Read more