Today's February Microsoft Security Bulletin release patches a long list of vulnerabilities. However, only a subset of these vulnerabilities are critical. Four of them effect client side software and one effect server side - Internet Explorer, DirectShow media processing components (using web browsers or Office software as a vector of delivery), OLE automation components (APT related spearphish), and one effecting the specially licensed "Oracle Outside In" components hosted by Microsoft Exchange that could be used to attack OWA users. These critical vulnerabilities all potentially enable remote code execution, as does the Sharepoint server related Bulletin rated "important" this month. The other vulnerabilities enable Elevation of Privilege and Denial of Service attacks. Several of the vulnerabilities have been publicly disclosed, and at least one is known to be publicly exploited. A large number of the CVE being patched are in the kernel code, so this month most everyone should expect to manage a reboot.

The long list of CVE patched by MS-13-016 all address race conditions that were privately reported in win32k.sys, which all enable non-trivial EoP attacks. This lessens the severity of the issue, as evidenced by the recent RDP vulnerability that attracted so much attention at the end of this past year.

So, we should focus immediate efforts on the handful of critical RCE this month.

The folks at the Microsoft Security Response Center are winding down 2012 with another full release of seven Security Bulletins containing fixes for memory corruption on application, server, and system code along with a Certificate Bypass problem and set of fixes for Oracle Outside In software components. Within the seven Bulletins, they are patching at least 11 vulnerabilities, accurately described in the Advanced notification for this month. The MSRC recommends that their Internet Explorer (MS12-077) and Microsoft Word (MS12-079) updates are addressed asap.

The December 2012 Microsoft Security Bulletin Release fixes a varying array of versions of software and platforms per Bulletin. For consumers, that mostly means ensuring that the Microsoft Update software is enabled, run, and selected patches applied. For the vast majority of Windows customers, this month's release also requires that customers reboot their systems following the updates - the Internet Explorer, the kernel level font parsing updates and the file handling updates all require a reboot and hotpatching is not supported. The lack of hotpatch support means that the fix is not enabled on the system until it is rebooted. For IT folks in large and small organizations, this month's Release also requires some time set aside to understand whether or not your organization is running the versions of software requiring patches and accordingly address your environment.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer code maintains three different use-after-free vulnerabilities that are being patched this month. This "use-after-free" category of bugs is continuing to prove very difficult to stamp out, even in meaty, prevalent attack vectors like Internet Explorer. It was this sort of vulnerability that was abused in the 2010 Aurora cyber-espionage attacks on Google, Adobe, and the long list of other international corporate names that continue to maintain their incidents undisclosed and in the dark. At least one of these Internet Explorer vulnerabilities is likely to have exploit code developed against it.

As a vector of delivery for spearphish attacks, Microsoft Office seems to me to be the most popular target in the second half of the year. CVE-2012-0158 and CVE-2010-3333 continue to be identified in malicious attachments (both malicious Word and Excel files) in targeted attacks across the globe, while Adobe Reader and Flash, which were heavily abused, almost have fallen off the map. I don't know if this coincides with the release and distribution of the newly armored Adobe Reader X software and more sandboxing for Flash, or simply that offensive security investment in late summer had been directed toward producing toolkits that pump out the Office exploits we are seeing now. Either way, be sure to patch this Word flaw CVE-2012-2539 asap.

Unfortunately, we have seen kernel level exploits bundled into mass-exploitation kits like Blackhole. The Duqu exploit, previously used in very targeted attacks throughout the middle east, is being re-used in this manner. And MS12-078 this month patches kernel mode RCE for OpenType and TrueType font parsing flaws. The recent mass-exploitation activity increases and interest in kernel level font parsing vulnerabilities coincides with the open source github release of Microsoft font fuzzing tools and projects.

More of the Oracle Outside In code is being updated this month with a pile of publicly known critical vulnerabilities being patched much like in August of this year. Critical and Important Microsoft Exchange, DirectPlay, and IPHTTPS components are also being patched this month.

Also following up the annnouncement of the Microsoft software update release, Microsoft announced the availability of security updates for Adobe Flash that effect Internet Explorer users, among others. The flaws include a RCE buffer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2012-5676), RCE integer overflow vulnerability (CVE-2012-5677), and memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2012-5678). For my production workstations and mobile devices, I've got multiple web browsers, and each one uses a different implementation of Flash. In my case, on my production systems, I visit this page with each browser to determine whether or not I have the lastest version of Flash. Android systems are effected too, and you can find more information at Adobe's APSB12-27. Perhaps we will see a resurgence of Flash exploitation over the next few weeks and into the New Year.

This month's patch Tuesday fixes a small set of critical vulnerabilities in a variety of client side software and one "important" server side Forefront UAG data leakage/information disclosure issue. Six bulletins have been created to address eleven exploitable flaws. Three of the six bulletins are top priority and should be addressed ASAP. These are the MS12-023 bulletin, patching a set of five Internet Explorer vulnerabilities leading to remote code execution, and the MS12-027 bulletin, patching the MSCOMCTL ActiveX Control currently receiving some attention as a part of very limited targeted attacks. If they must prioritize deployment, administrators should start their work here. Most folks should have automatic updates enabled and will silently receive the patches, or they can simply navigate their start menu and manually begin the Windows update process.

RCE attacks abusing these six IE and ActiveX vulnerabilities would look like web browser redirections to malicious sites hosting web pages attacking Internet Explorer and emails carrying malicious attachments constructed to appear familiar to the targeted victim. These are currently significant vectors of attack for both consumer/home and corporate Microsoft product users.

Microsoft also is recommending that administrators prioritize the Authenticode flaw and rated it critical, which could be used as a part of targeted attacks. And ActiveX controls can be delivered leveraging this vulnerability, so some distribution vectors may become enhanced. But this flaw allows for additions and modifications to existing code that in turn won't invalidate the existing signature.

A vulnerability exists in the .Net framework, allowing for XBAP applications to be run from the Internet Zone with a prompt. But anytime a decision like that is left to a user, it seems that we have a 50/50 chance of successful exploitation. The remaining vulnerabilty in the Office converter is significant and may result in RCE, but is much less likely to be attacked.

Dangerous, but manageable.

Microsoft is releasing 9 Security Bulletins this month (MS12-008 through MS12-016), patching a total 21 vulnerabilities. Some of these vulnerabilities may enable remote code execution (RCE) in limited circumstances, and offensive security researchers have claimed that a "bug" fixed this month should be client-side remote exploitable, but after months of public circulation, there have been no known working exploits.

The prioritized vulnerabilities patched this month exist in Internet Explorer, a specific version of the C runtime, and .NET framework. The Internet Explorer and .NET framework vulnerabilities may result in a potential drive-by exploits, so consumers and businesses alike should immediately install these patches - mass exploitation is likely to be delivered via COTS exploit packs like Blackhole and its ilk.

The Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Incubator program updated their Flash Platform runtime beta program to version 5, delivered as Flash Player version 11.2.300.130. It includes a "sandboxed" version of the 32-bit Flash Player they are calling "Protected Mode for Mozilla Firefox on Windows 7 and Windows Vista systems". It has been over a year since Adobe discussed the Internet Explorer ActiveX Protected Mode version release on their ASSET blog, and the version running on Google Chrome was sandboxed too.

Adobe is building on the successes that they have seen in their Adobe Reader X software. Its sandbox technology has substantially raised the bar for driving up the costs of "offensive research", resulting in a dearth of Itw exploits on Reader X. As in "none" in 2011. This trend reflects 2011 targeted attack activity that we’ve observed. 2011 APT related attacks nailed outdated versions of Adobe Flash software delivered as "authplay.dll" in Adobe Reader v8.x and v9.x and the general Flash component "NPSWF32.dll" used by older versions of Microsoft Office and other applications. Adobe X just wasn't hit. IE Protected Mode wasn't hit. Chrome sandboxed Flash wasn't hit. If there are incident handlers out there that saw a different story, please let me know.

S. Korean handlers are slow to take down the publicly distributed malicious code exploiting CVE-2012-0003, a vulnerability patched in Microsoft's January 2012 patch release MS12-004. We have discussed with reporters that the code has been available since the 21st, and a site appears to have been publicly attacking very low numbers of Korean users over the past day or so. The site remains up at this time.

Microsoft finishes out this year of patching with a heavy release that's all over place. While techs were notified of an anticipated 14 bulletins, 13 were released for the month of December. Headline grabbing events and code are addressed in one of them, and while fewer are labelled "Critical", are they any less important?

Many speculative bits have been spilled on the group behind Stuxnet and its precursor Duqu, with our own researchers posting at least a half dozen Securelist writeups on Duqu findings alone. MS11-087 patches up the delivery vector for Duqu itself. This kernel mode vulnerability was publicly identified and confirmed at the beginning of November, but could well have been used quietly in attacks around the world for a year or more.

The SSL PKI has been in use and implemented for 15 years now to secure online communications. From its initial proprosals and immediate growth, the need for secured online communications has been met with challenges. The infrastructure and protocol itself is showing signs of wear, with multiple attacks and corrections to the scheme itself. And in its 15th year, an alternative to the Cerificate Authority infrastructure is finally being given some competition with the release and debate around Convergence, an open source alternative to the current system of Certificate Authorities. Feel free to right click and download for the full sized version; the graphic below provides a list of some of the major events for SSL/TLS PKI in the past 15 years.

With headlines like "New cyber threat compromises financial information - Experts say new threat could affect millions of sites", you would think that the trust model of the internet is finally crumbled.

Following an hour long Friday evening wait for the demo, the Ekoparty demo for the SSL hack was staged. And it was interesting that the attack succeeded in cracking the SSL confidentiality model as implemented by the Mozilla Firefox browser when communicating with paypal.com web servers over https. At the same time, it seemed to be an impractical exploit targeting a weakness that was fixed three months ago in Chromium source code.

Also of note, is the fact that the attack has been well known for almost 10 years, it's just that there hasn't been a practical exploit implementing the attack. And that they refined their blockwise attack model far better than previous chosen-plaintext attack models, making it more effective than prior attacks.

So there seems to be another good security reason to use Google's Chrome browser, for those of you highly sensitive to security issues. Also interesting were some of the tricks they used to make it work. While they couldn't get it to work in pure javascript or flash, they implemented the exploit in a Java applet and attacked the stream between Firefox and https://paypal.com. The "tricks" they used to bypass "Same Origin Policy" with Java were surprising, and they came up with the entire stolen session cookie with which to log in to paypal.com as the victim over http in under three minutes. While I am sure that the other browser vendors will update their CBC encryption routines to better randomize their IV and overcome this attack as suggested almost ten years ago, one could use Chrome and maintain secure communications in regards to this exploit. To me, this exploit is a low risk one because of its impracticality. Whether they properly disclosed their work to all browser vendors, giving developers plenty of time prior to disclosure remains a question to me, but they did contact at least the Chrome team. Interesting research and impressive effort implementing a difficult to work concept certainly. These guys know crypto and communications technologies. But the sky has not fallen. Yet.

For related technical information, and thoughts from relevant developers and researchers, please check out my "Related Links" list to the right side of the post text. I try to be thorough in my selection.

UPDATE(9/26): Microsoft advises that they are investigating the matter for their Internet Explorer browser customers, stating that the issue is low risk anyways, "Considering the attack scenario, this vulnerability is not considered high risk to customers". Perhaps they were one of the browser vendors that were not contacted about the vulnerability.

Microsoft released 13 bulletins addressing 22 CVE's in its own software: Microsoft Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, .NET and Visual Studio. We'll be watching for Adobe to coordinate any release of their own updates today.

This month's release of 13 bulletins is a sizable one, following up on Microsoft's four bulletin release last month. Everything from Microsoft operating system kernel and networking components to their Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser and development products are impacted to patch information disclosure, denial of service, memory corruption, and elevation of privilege vulnerabilities.

Of the long list, a few appear to be the most severe. All versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer across mostly all of the Windows operating system are impacted in serious ways. Remote code execution exploits are possible along with information disclosure and less serious denial of service attacks. Microsoft Excel is effected by the manner in which its Windows Data Access Tracing component loads external libraries. An Excel file could be shared on a WebDAV directory along with a maliciously modified library. When it's opened, the library would load and execute on the system at the same privileges as the user that opened the Excel file. For vulnerabilities like these, we will be monitoring for related exploit inclusion in underground market exploit packs like BlackHole, NeoSploit and Phoenix, which is always a bad thing. Visio is also at risk of remote code execution for a second month in a row as attackers serve up modified Visio files. But we won't see its inclusion in the packs because of its low install base numbers.

Four of these Microsoft Security Bulletins patch vulnerabilities that may lead to severe problems like remote code execution, which are often included as a part of client-side drive-by attacks in exploit packs. But this month one of the more interesting vulnerabilities is server-side and may lead to remote code execution on Microsoft DNS servers. This one may be timely because of suggestions that the ongoing progress to DNSSEC implementation will alleviate the problems that the PKI infrastructure has seen related in certificate authorities, a huge subject Moxie Marlinspike addressed at Blackhat last week.

As always, we recommend patching your systems asap. Cheers to a problem free patch Tuesday!