Microsoft Rushes Out ‘Fix It’ For Internet Explorer 0-day Exploit

Pretty unusual for Microsoft but they’ve rushed out a fast fix for a 0-day Internet Explorer vulnerability which allows remote code execution and malware dropping. It doesn’t effect the latest version of Internet Explorer (9) but it effects all the common previous versions (6, 7 & 8) – which still accounts for the majority of users.
It is definitely important though, so I can appreciate their urgency. The sad part is most people that will fall for the scam sites that push out such malware won’t know about this patch, so they will remain at risk.
It will help a lot for corporates though managing the entire organization security as many are mandated to use Internet Explorer, and try and keep it secure..

Microsoft has pushed out a temporary fix to defend against a zero-day vulnerability that surfaced in attacks launched last week.
The security flaw (CVE-2012-4792) – which affects IE 6, 7 and 8 but not the latest versions of Microsoft’s web browser software – allows malware to be dropped onto Windows PCs running the vulnerable software, providing, of course, that users can be tricked into visiting booby-trapped websites.
Redmond has released a temporary Fix It (easy-to-apply workaround) pending the development of a more comprehensive patch.
The flaw was initially discovered by security tools firm FireEye on the Council on Foreign Relations website on 27 December.

The flaw was discovered right before the new year on December 27th, so Microsoft have managed to get this temporary fix out pretty fast. I’d imagine the full patch will be rolled into the next Windows Update Patch Tuesday.
I don’t expect anyone reading this is using Internet Explorer, so it wouldn’t effect us anyway – but seen as though you are probably at home over the holidays. Do us all a favour and install Chrome or Firefox on your relatives computers.

The attack had been running for at least a week, and perhaps longer, before it was detected. Retrospective analysis by Sophos suggests the same exploit was used on at least five additional websites, suggesting assaults using the bug are far from limited.
“While the assaults appeared to be targeting a small number of sites, there is no obvious link between the victims,” noted Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos Canada, in a blog post. “Some are referring to this as a ‘watering hole’ attack, but the evidence we have doesn’t necessarily support that conclusion.”
Security watchers advise either applying Redmond’s workarounds, upgrading to IE 9 or using an alternative browser – at least until a proper patch becomes available. The next patch Tuesday is coming up on 8 January. This doesn’t give Microsoft much time but given the high-profile nature of the vulnerability it’s likely that Redmond will release a patch sooner rather than later.

It was exploited for a week at least before discovery, so that’d give a date of around December 20th when it was first seen in the wild. The next Patch Tuesday is coming in 5 days, so we might even see an emergency out of bounds patch for this so it gets pushed out via Windows Update to the masses.

Microsoft will shut down Windows Live Messenger next year, compelling users to migrate to Skype, whose latest version can import users’ Messenger contacts.
 With the exception of mainland China, Windows Live Messenger will close in the first quarter of 2013, and its users should install the latest version of Skype, Microsoft said on Tuesday.
 Users can sign into the Skype service with the credentials they use to access their Microsoft online services, including Windows Live Messenger. They will find their Windows Live Messenger contacts on their Skype contacts list. If they used both Windows Live Messenger and Skype, the contacts lists will be merged.

 “We want to focus our efforts on making things simpler for our users while continuously improving the overall experience,” wrote Tony Bates, Skype’s president, in a blog post.

 To encourage Windows Live Messenger users to update to Skype, Bates touted several benefits they’ll get from Skype, including support for more devices such as iPad and Android tablets, screen sharing, the ability to place calls to landline phones, and group video conferencing.
 However, this type of migration is rarely seamless, and users are already raising questions in comments to Bates’ blog post, including the availability of certain Windows Live Messenger features and the capacity of the Skype infrastructure to sustain the new workload.
 Microsoft, which acquired Skype in October 2011 for $8.5 billion, will provide more information about the transition, as well as introduce special offers for fee-based Skype services, in the coming months, Bates wrote.

COLD WAR ERA TACTICTS STILL USED BY THE RUSSIANS

Eight people have been arrested in Houston, Texas, on charges of illegally exporting hi-tech components to Russian security bodies.

Alexander Fishenko, who owns companies in Texas and Moscow, was charged with operating in the US as an unregistered agent of the Russian government.
The indictment names 11 suspects, all of whom are due in court in Houston except for three who are in Russia.

Virtual machine software is only the beginning

Virtualization - from mainframes to industry standard systems

Virtualization is a very useful tool that allows system resources to be utilized in new ways. Unfortunately, many people mistakenly equate virtual machine technology, technology that can encapsulate all of the software that runs on a physical system and allows that capsule to run along side of others on a single host system, with virtualization itself. In reality, virtualization is a well-established group of technologies with a long track record of success in data centers around the world. Suppliers, such as HP, IBM, Intel, and Oracle, have been involved with all levels of virtualization technology for a very long time. IBM, for example has been offering virtualization technology since the late 1960s.

Flaws sited in the TOR Anonymity network

At the Chaos Computer Club Congress in Berlin, Germany on Monday, researchers from the University of Regensburg delivered a new warning about the Tor anonymizer network, a system aimed at hiding details of a computer user’s online activity from spying eyes.
The attack doesn’t quite make a surfer’s activity an open book, but offers the ability for someone on the same local network—a Wi-Fi network provider, or an ISP working at law enforcement (or a regime’s) request, for example—to gain a potentially good idea of sites an anonymous surfer is viewing.
“Developers have to be aware of this kind of attack, and develop countermeasures,” said Dominik Herrmann, a Regensburg PhD student studying profiling and fingerprinting attacks. “But that proves to be very difficult.”

A Virus Program to Block Websites

Most of us are familiar with the virus that used to block Orkut and Youtube site. If you are curious about creating such a virus on your own, here is how it can be done. As usual I’ll use my favorite programming language ‘C’ to create this website blocking virus. I will give a brief introduction about this virus before I jump into the technical jargon.

HTML 5: The New Tech Kid taking over

It's hard to imagine now, but original sites on the world wide web, written in HTML code or hypertext mark-up language, were made up of little more than text.

Corporate web designers were well aware that most of their customers had slow connections and would not tolerate much of a wait. 

Even a simple black and white image could irritate a user, as it gradually appeared on the screen revealing itself one painful line at a time.