Web based threats such as malicious links on social medias, infected websites and malicious ads are terms that we read about quite often. We security experts have for quite some time tried to emphasize the importance of protecting both your website and computer from being infected, since these malicious websites often exploit client vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities have been one of the major attack vectors for malware writers in recent years, but is it still a problem?

We are constantly seeing new software vulnerabilities , and the bad guys are very quick to developg exploits which are then hosted in their exploit kits. The vulnerabilities themselves are not dangerous unless the attacker is able to exploit them on the victim’s computer. The attackers have therefor developed ways to get victims to visit a website, for example, which then triggers the exploit. Some common ways are through social engineering or infecting a legitimate website with redirection code that points to the exploit kit.

Last month almost all major vendors released critical security updates for their software, such as Adobe, Oracle, Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla. I then started to research the current threat landscape, and focused on Sweden since I am the security researcher for the Nordic region; and after just a few minutes I saw that both Swedish websites and Swedish users were under attack.

In September we saw a 3700% increase in JavaScript-based redirection scripts, specifically Trojan.JS.Redirector.ro. This malicious redirector went from 908th place to 15th place in the list of the most detected malware in Sweden in one month. This code only redirects users to another URL, and I thought it was strange that we did not really see an increase of detected malware in September?

Adobe pushed an emergency update to its ubiquitous Flash player yesterday that closed holes on 6 separate vulnerabilities. Of the 6, 4 were related directly to code execution (CVE-2011-2426, CVE-2011-2427, CVE-2011- 2428, CVE-2011-2430) One revolves around a universal cross-site scripting issue (CVE-2011-2444), and the last vulnerability can lead to information disclosure (CVE-2011-2429).

We recommend that you update all systems immediately. Adobe also states that CVE-2011-2444 relating to cross-site scripting, has reportedly been seen in the wild. The update is available here: UPDATE

In addition to today's Microsoft updates, users of Adobe's Reader and Acrobat software on both Windows and Apple systems need to update their software ASAP. Adobe released Bulletin APSB11-24, addressing at least thirteen memory corruption flaws, and several privilege escalation, logic flaw, and bypass issues.

In today's earlier post about Microsoft's patched vulnerabilities, Excel was highlighted as the target of choice in many targeted attacks. Along those lines, Adobe's Reader and Flash are among the most commonly exploited software applications that are attacked by professional attackers.

In this special edition Ryan Naraine joins David Lenoe, Head of the Product Security Incident Response Team, Adobe, in a discussion about how Adobe is responding to attacks against zero-day vulnerabilities in PDF Reader and Flash Player.

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!

Yesterday, I blogged about the older version of Adobe Flash Player on my recently purchased Google Chromebook. On Tuesday, the day before, I'd sent out a note to Adobe's PSIRT asking if they knew what was up with this earlier version.

Today, Adobe got back to me today saying that Flash Player version 10.2.158.27 is the latest version of Flash for Chromebooks. This patch was pushed out yesterday after my blog post went live. (You may notice my screenshot shows 10.2.158.26)

This week my Samsung Chromebook finally arrived. My interest in this platform had been especially piqued after my colleague Costin Raiu's excellent analysis following the Chromebook's introduction.

Google claims Chromebooks are so secure they don't need anti-malware. Such a statement obviously got me interested in the system's defenses.

Imagine my surprise when I was confronted with the following:

This month's patch Tuesday is a sizable one by any standards, following the quiet Tuesday that my colleague Roel Schouwenberg described last month. Microsoft is patching a total of 34 vulnerabilities in 16 bulletins, MS11-038 through MS11-051. At least eight different Microsoft product lines are updated, and Adobe is coordinating release of Reader, Acrobat, Shockwave and Flash updates as well today.

So we are looking at patching the following programs:
Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, .NET, SQL, Visual Studio, Silverlight, ISA and Adobe Reader, Acrobat, Shockwave and Flash player. More than half of the vulnerabilities being patched exist in the Internet Explorer and Microsoft Excel software components, frequent targets of drive-by and spear phishing attacks.

Most interesting is MS11-050, a single patch that knocks out 11 separate Internet Explorer vulnerabilities, some enabling information disclosure (cookiejacking), memory corruption and remote code execution: CVE-2011-1250, CVE-2011-1251, CVE-2011-1252, CVE-2011-1254, CVE-2011-1255, CVE-2011-1256, CVE-2011-1260, CVE-2011-1261, CVE-2011-1262. The additional VML patch MS11-052 knocks out another Internet Explorer vulnerability, CVE-2011-1266.

Microsoft already pointed out that the Internet Explorer patch addressing "cookiejacking" is not a particularly high risk issue because it is relatively unknown to them as an attack vector, and because there are more substantial social engineering techniques. While those points may be true, now that the techniques are more widely discussed, the risk of them being abused by more attackers goes up as well.

Eight different privately reported vulnerabilities are being patched in Microsoft Excel alone by MS11-045, each of which allow for remote code execution. We are still reviewing why the patch is rated "important" and not critical for the various Excel versions.

The patches that stand out result in remote code execution within Internet Explorer, Office and Silverlight. The recent history of attacks on consumer and corporate users, including the many successful spear phishing and APT attacks should help increase the urgency of these patches.

On the server side in the cloud, Microsoft is patching a vulnerability that could be abused in a DoS attack that could only be staged from within the cloud. MS11-047 is rated an "Important" patch for Windows 2008 versions, correcting a flaw in Hyper-V where a guest could send a malformed packet to the VMBus and result in denial of service on the server. MS11-039 is the Silverlight patch that could not only be used in a remote code execution attack on the client side, but also can be used to remotely run arbitrary code on vulnerable IIS web servers.

At least eight of the nine patches rated "Critical" requires a restart, be prepared for this interruption. We recommend applying all of this month's released patches asap.

After last month's mega patch Tuesday this month's can only be described as very quiet. A total of three vulnerabilities are getting patched in two bulletins, MS011-035 and MS011-036.

MS011-035 deals with a remote unauthenticated vulnerability in the WINS service which can lead to code execution running with SYSTEM privileges. This vulnerability affects the Microsoft Server products. Though consistent exploit code seems unlikely it looks rather easy to DoS the service.

MS011-036 deals with two vulnerabilities in Powerpoint. CVE-2011-1269 will likely see consistent exploit code, while Microsoft believes there won't be functioning exploit code for CVE-2011-1270. As pointed out by Kurt Baumgartner here Microsoft is introducing a new exploitability index this month.

Microsoft is making changes to its exploitability index to help clarify vulnerability issues in its software to its customers, keeping its program far ahead of other major vendors. Still, no system is perfect.

Microsoft's Security Response Center team has a steep uphill climb to conquer the mountain of vulnerability handling in their software that slowly but surely are publicly discovered, exploited and discussed. It is not an enviable task.

In just five days, the team will roll out a couple of changes. One change splits exploitability ratings for their newest product versions from all older releases. The two updates for the upcoming Patch Tuesday will also provide information for the bugs even if they do not provide remote code execution, and instead provide a surface for denial of service attacks.