Microsoft has taken down 277 internet domains that it believed was being used to run the Waledac botnet.
In what it called ‘Operation b49′ that was the ‘result of months of investigation and the innovative application of a tried and true legal strategy’, according to Microsoft’s associate general counsel Tim Cranton, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order that quickly and effectively cut off traffic to Waledac at the ‘.com’ or domain registry level.
Cranton said: “Microsoft has since been taking additional technical countermeasures to downgrade much of the remaining peer-to-peer command and control communication within the botnet, and we will continue to work with the security community to mitigate and respond to this botnet.
“Three days into the effort, Operation b49 has effectively shut down connections to the vast majority of Waledac-infected computers, and our goal is to make that disruption permanent. But the operation hasn’t cleaned the infected computers and is not a silver bullet for undoing all the damage we believe Waledac has caused. Although the zombies are now largely out of the bot-herders’ control, they are still infected with the original malware.”
Source: SC Magazine UK
Filed under Patches, Software
Tagged as adobe, Patches
Security updates 10.0.45.2 for the Adobe Flash Player and 1.5.3.1930 for AIR fix a critical security vulnerability which allows Flash applets to circumvent certain security functions in order to access other websites without obtaining the user’s permission. A specially crafted Flash file on a malicious web page could read data, including banking data or similar, displayed in other open browser windows.
Normally, Flash applications are only permitted to access resources on the server from which they have been loaded. In order to allow content to be loaded more flexibly, since version 7, the Flash framework has allowed ‘cross domain requests’. Sites serving Flash applets can create a crossdomain.xml file which specifies which external sites or servers the Flash applets are permitted to make requests from without requiring a warning to be displayed in Flash Player.
These are usually specified very tightly, with the website operator entering only domains operated by partners and other trusted websites. The current vulnerability appears to allow these restrictions to be circumvented so that a crafted Flash file can access objects on any website without requiring user clearance. Users should therefore not hold back in installing the Flash update as soon as possible.
The update also fixes a denial of service (DoS) vulnerability, no further details of which are given. Further tests are needed to determine whether this is the vulnerability which has been unpatched for several months for which Adobe recently apologised. The vendor originally intended to fix this vulnerability in the next major release, 10.1.
Source: The H Security
Angry customers blame MS10-015 for Blue Screen of Death and XP reboot hell.
Tuesday’s security updates from Microsoft have crippled Windows XP PCs with the notorious Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), users have reported on the company’s support forum.
Complaints began early yesterday, and gained momentum throughout the day.
“I updated 11 Windows XP updates today and restarted my PC like it asked me to,” said a user identified as “tansenroy” who kicked off a growing support thread . “From then on, Windows cannot restart again! It is stopping at the blue screen with the following message: ‘A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer.’”
Others joined in with similar reports. “There is something seriously wrong with the update. I can’t even open in safe mode,” said “Ghellow,” referring to Windows diagnostic mode that’s often a last-chance way to boot a PC.
“I am not very happy with Microsoft as I got to work this morning to find my helpdesk flooded with messages that the PC has the famous Blue Screen,” said “brawfab.”
“I had to go to work and use my Mac to get online to find out what is going on with the XP updates last night,” complained “moosewalk” on the same thread. “I am this much closer to switching over to a Mac for good.”
Source: Infoworld
