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A new zero-day vulnerability involving Windows XP reported today. This flaw could potentially allow a system to be remotely compromised.

The culprit in this instance involves the implementation of the “FindFile()” in the mfc42.dll and mfc42u.dll files bundled with the operating system. These files are still likely to be linked to by older applications.

Excerpt from Secunia:

The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the “FindFile()” function of the CFileFind class in mfc42.dll and mfc42u.dll. This can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow by passing an overly long argument to the affected function.

Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code.

No patches have been announced for this vulnerability yet. It is recommended for applications using this vulnerable library to first check the length of the user input before passing it to the affected function.

A zero-day PDF vulnerability in Adobe’s Acrobat Reader has come to light that can lead to Windows boxes getting taken over completely and invisibly, according to a security researcher.

“All it takes is to open a [maliciously rigged] PDF document or stumble across a page which embeds one,” said researcher Petko D. Petkov, aka pdp, in a blog posting on Sept. 20.

Click for more on Critical Zero-Day PDF Bug Compromises Windows PCs »

Microsoft explained the [misleading] “back-door” of Windows Update service.

It was widely reported last week that Microsoft had automatically updated systems that had Automatic Updates set to “Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them”. Nate Clinton, a Windows Update Program Manager at Microsoft posted a response on his blog shortly after the widespread [misconceived] reporting had gone out.

Click for more on The Windows Update Stealth Affair Cleared »

Researcher David Maynor has published details of the controversial Apple Wi-Fi hack he disclosed at last year’s Black Hat conference.

Maynor had been under a nondisclosure agreement, which had previously prevented him from publishing details of the hack, but the NDA is over now and by going public with the information, Maynor hopes to help other Apple researchers with new documentation on things like Wi-Fi debugging and the Mac OS X kernel core dumping facility.”

Click for more on Hacker Publishes Notorious Apple Wi-Fi Attack »

Six days after proof-of-concept code was released for a long-unpatched bug in Apple’s QuickTime media player, Firefox is updated with a fix.

Last week, Mozilla confirmed that a year-old unpatched vulnerability in Apple’s QuickTime media player opens up a backdoor that could allow a hacker to break into Firefox. A researcher who discovered the flaw posted proof-of-concept exploits for it on his blog.

Now a week later, Mozilla released Firefox 2.0.0.7 to patch the QuickTime vulnerability.

Click for more on Mozilla Updates Firefox To Patch QuickTime Bug »

Microsoft is making the third service pack for Office 2003 available for free download, which the company says strengthens the product’s defenses against malicious software. The popular Fast Save feature is disabled due to security reason.

“Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 is the culmination of several years of improvements to the product suite … It makes it easier to work with the Windows Vista operating system, exchange files with people who use the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and interact with servers in the 2007 release. SP3 also minimizes the issues that previously caused distractions,” a white paper released along with the service pack says.

Click for more on Microsoft Releases Office 2003 Service Pack 3, Fast Save Disabled »

So over the passing months, the UAC prompt has gone from nice idea (as it was advised) to “not the best solution” to something that admins may actually have to find a way to work around.

The latest version of a well-reviewed third-party security policy enhancement system for Windows Vista claims to solve what its manufacturer characterizes as “not a secure solution” to a critical problem Windows historically had with administrator privileges on programs. But in the announcement of the upgrade earlier this week, a key Microsoft product manager is quoted as having acknowledged Vista’s own take on the solution was not quite enough, effectively reversing his company’s stand on User Account Control.

Click for more on Microsoft Endorses Product That Turns Off Vista UAC Nags »

The domain used to host small Google Gadget applications written by Web developers could be misused by phishers, a Web security researcher said Friday.

Google Gadgets are little programs that gather information on the Web and then display them on multiple Web pages. They are used to give Webmasters an easy way to display everything from sports scores to astronomical data on their sites.

Unfortunately, they can also be misused by phishers to get around antiphishing filters. Attackers could create a phishing site on the gmodules.com domain and then send that URL to victims. Because Google’s gmodules.com domain is trusted by antiphishing filters, victims might then go to the phishing site without being warned by their browser’s filtering software.

Security researcher Robert Hansen, a frequent critic of Google, reported the issue to the company’s security team, but he was not satisfied with their response. He says Google told him that what he sees as a flaw is simply part of the site’s expected behavior. Google couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

Google should restrict the URLs that can use this domain to avoid helping online criminals, said Hansen, who is CEO of SecTheory. “If they leave it intact, I guarantee you it will be used in an attack.”

Such an attack would probably be obvious, however, to a vigilant Web surfer, who would know better than to enter banking information on a site hosted on the gmodules.com domain.

There’s not much that can be done to prevent phishers from abusing sites like this if Google wants to let its users create content, said Alex Stamos, a researcher with Isec Partners. “They have to have this throw-away domain to jail modules written by other people,” he said. “It’s not an unreasonable model, and it’s the best they can do to host content created by malicious parties while not exposing themselves to attack.”

Click for more on Google Gadgets can be misused by phishers »

The popular IM, Yahoo Messenger, now get another strike. Researchers at McAfee have verified and reproduced a bug first reported by a Chinese researcher.

The bug is caused by the Webcam function and on the most recent version of Yahoo Messenger as of today, V8.1.0.413.

“It seems like a classic heap overflow, which can be triggered when the victim accepts a Webcam invite,” wrote one of the McAfee researchers.

The bug, according to McAfee, may enable user-assisted remote-code execution attacks. Informationweek.com claims that they have not seen any exploit code for this flaw published yet. However, a complied code is currently available as prototype and will initiate a DoS(deny of service) attack to victim computer(i.e. anyone using Yahoo Messenger).

McAfee said it has contacted Yahoo’s security team and notified it of the problem.

“Since learning of this issue, we have been actively working towards a resolution and expect to have a fix shortly,” said a Yahoo spokesman in an e-mail to InformationWeek. “Yahoo takes security seriously and consistently employs measures to help protect our users.”

However, the hacker who found this bug claimed that Yahoo Messenger was poorly written, and there might be more potential security flaw.

Back in June, Yahoo Messenger was patched due to a buffer-overflow flaw in an ActiveX control, which is also part of the Webcam.

McAfee’s researchers offer up a few recommendations to deal with this latest bug:

• Users should not accept Webcam invites from untrusted sources until a patch for this vulnerability is released and installed
• Block outgoing traffic on TCP port 5100 until Yahoo can patch the flaw.