Updates

A compilation of the latest information about Virus, Security and Patches which could be vital for your system

Enterprise database security vulnerabilities

UK based Security firm, NGS Software has warned of security vulnerabilities in Oracle’s database server that may permit an intruder to gain access privileges. The flaws affect the company’s 10g/9i database servers on all platforms. The firm said that the Oracle 10g database has an ‘extproc’ buffer overflow which lets an attacker execute external procedures via extproc. Additionally, default database triggers in Oracle can be compromised to gain privileges. Oracle has released a patch (#68) for addressing this problem. See

metalink.oracle.com

The same firm also warned of vulnerabilities caused by buffer overflows in IBM’s DB2 database. A local attacker can exploit this buffer overrun to gain root privileges. IBM has released a patch and the same can be downloaded from

www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/udb/support/downloadv8.html

Spamhunter flaw

Security experts have discovered a flaw in Symantec’s anti-spam product, Brightmail Anti-Spam Spamhunter. The product crashes when trying to convert certain valid character sets to UTF which results in a denial of service condition. The character recognition converters used by the product do not recognise certain character encoding sets specifically ISO-8859-10, ISO-8859-13 and ISO-8859-15. If a remote hacker supplies the product with an e-mail message containing the specified character sets, Spamhunter cannot recognise them leading to a crash and resulting in denial of service. Symantec has already released a patch to overcome this flaw.

KDE vulnerability

A security flaw has been reported in KDE, the popular desktop environment for UNIX and Linux. KDE applications which use the ftp kioslave (for example, Konqueror) let remote attackers execute FTP commands. This vulnerability allows a hacker to misuse the ftp kioslave to connect to a SMTP server and issue commands like sending an e-mail. Essentially the FTP kioslave can be misused to execute any ftp command on the server. Patches can be downloaded from ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/security_patches

W32.Looked.B

A new worm, W32.Looked.B infects .exe files on the Windows platform. Reported by Symantec, the worm terminates security related processes and blocks access to Web sites. The size of an infected file is increased by 67,072 bytes. The icon of the infected files is similar to the icon used for representing .zip files. Most security firms have released patches for detecting this virus.

Internet Explorer security flaw

Security research group, Greyhats Security Group, has announced a new Microsoft Internet Explorer flaw. The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the DHTML Edit ActiveX control. This vulnerability called the “MSIE DHTML Edit Control Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability’ lets hackers execute cross-site scripting attacks. It is also possible to steal cookie based authentication details by exploiting this vulnerability. For thwarting this problem, Security firm, Secunia has recommended disabling Active X support.