Multi security issues are affecting the widely used GMail, Blogspot and Picasa services.
In the past few days, there have been multiple disclosures of security vulnerabilities in a wide range of Google products.
Click for more on Hackers expose holes in GMail, Blogspot, Search Appliance »
Multiple Google-targeted exploits disclosed in the past 3 days could compromise your GMail account, steal your pictures from Picasa or impersonate you on almost 200,000 big sites.
In the past 3 days, 4 interesting disclosures have been published:
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.
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.
Apple is actively working against any SIM unlocks of the iPhone, which would void the warranty.
During a Q&A seesion that took place after yesterday’s press event in London announcing availability details of the iPhone in the UK, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was asked by a journalist whether unlocking was a concern for the company, Jobs said:
It’s a constant cat and mouse game, We try to stay ahead. People will try to break in, and it’s our job to stop them breaking in.
Click for more on Unlocking iPhone: May result in expensive brick »
Users running Firefox are vulnerable to IE flaws via files supported by Windows Media Player, a researcher shows.
Running Firefox or Opera as a default browser won’t save you from unpatched Internet Explorer vulnerabilities—a fact made explicit when a researcher showed how easy it is to put HTML inside files supported by Windows Media Player.
Researcher Petko D. Petkov said in a Sept. 18 blog posting that he’s found that a fully patched Windows XP Service Pack 2 system running Internet Explorer 6 or 7 along with Windows Media Player 9—the default, although the media player is now up to Version 11—will open any page of an attacker’s choice even if the default browser is not Internet Explorer.
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 »
The Chinese hacker made it again: SLIC enabled bioses for almost all Thinkpad with PM processor or higher, include but don’t limit to X31, X32, X40, X41, R40, T40, T41, T42(p), T43(p), R50, T60(p), X60(s) and the list is still increasing, just almost all the Thinkpad models made in the last 3 years.
The SLIC(Software Licensing Description Table) table in BIOS is used by OEM versions of Windows Vista for activation by Royalty OEMs in order for the end-user to not have problems with activating, called SLP 2.0, or System-Locked Preinstallation 2.0. For activation to work, clients obtained through the OEM channels that have an ACPI_SLIC table in the system BIOS are required to have a valid Windows marker in the same ACPI_SLIC table. The appearance of the Windows marker is important for volume license customers who are planning to use Windows Vista volume-licensed media to re-image or upgrade OEM through the re-imaging rights provided in their volume license agreement. Not having the appropriate BIOS marker results in the following error or errors on these systems and prevents them from activating. However, a modified BIOS with proper SLIC table can let the client PC by-pass the Vista activation process.
Beijing, China: The former information security company Rising vice president Tan Wenming, along with his wife and university classmate made 2.81 million Yuan($371,000) selling a game plug-in for Legend of Mir 3, an online game operated by Optisp in China. There was a hearing last year and Tan admitted to selling the plug-ins and apologized to Optisp at the hearing. Early this year, Tan was convicted and sentenced 2 years and 6 months in jail by Beijing basic people’s courts, A new and final justice, made by intermediate people’s courts this Friday, changed it to 6 years and 500,000 Yuan Fine($65,000). His wife and his classmate, sentenced 3 and 2 years in jail, with $12,000 fine respectively.
Tan, Graduated from Peking University, was the formal Vice President of the Chinese Anti-Virus company Rising until 2003. Then he started making and selling game hacks till 2006.
This is also the first criminal charge in China made against game hacker.
StartForce, the used-to-be-popular copy protection system, seems to get some market in China after other big game companies, like Ubisoft, EA, dump it to avoid damage to customers’ PC and potential lawsuit.
A new game title, The Legend of Swordsman & Fairy 4, released on August 2007 in both Taiwan and Mainland China, uses Starforce 5.0 Pro as anti-pirate system. The new Starforce 5.0 includes online activation and the traditional “key disk” verification. On the first day of release, the activating demand is so high that the authentication server was crashed and offline for 24 hours. However, 10 days later, a “patch”, let users bypass the online verification procedure appeared, also with a detailed guide on burning the “key disk” using standard CDR and CD-Writer. Thus the new StarForce 5.0 is completely defeated(again).
This also becomes another case that pirated versions work better than original, since the online system has a ridiculous 10 activations/per year limitation. Also, a paid user has reported that the new StarForce broken the optical driver in his Thinkpad T61 Laptop and was out of warranty since CSR claimed this as solely user’s fault as StarForce was a known malware.
