January 23rd, 2010 ~ nicola
Microsoft shocked : Local Privilege Escalation in Windows Kernel.
Do you remember Google vs China? Remember bugs that have allowed Chinese hackers to enter into Gmail accounts and access to confidential information?
Microsoft has confirmed a privilege-escalation vulnerability in the Windows kernel, one day after a Google engineer posted details of the flaw to the Full Disclosure mailing list.
Systems Affected :
All supported versions of 32-bit Windows, while 64-bit versions, which includes Windows Servers 2008 R2, are not impacted.
Details :
Vulnerability is difficult to exploit, the risk for users is low, and the software giant is not aware of any public attacks exploiting the flaw.
To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must already have a local access to the system, then elevate their privileges to the administrative level and run programs of their choice on the system.
Advisory + sploit : (external link)
KiTrap0D
Internet Explorer – Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Microsoft is issuing on January 21 an out-of-band fix for the Internet Explorer security breach that affected Google and other companies in China.
Tags: 0-day, china, google, google vs china, ie rce, privilege escalation, windows kernel
Published in: Articles, Hacking, Infosecurity, News | 1 Comment »
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January 19th, 2010 ~ nicola
Summary:
Microsoft is investigating reports of limited, targeted attacks against customers of Internet Explorer 6, using a vulnerability in Internet Explorer.
Affected:
Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 is not affected, and that Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 on supported editions of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are vulnerable.
Vulnerability:
The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference within Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted. In a specially-crafted attack, in attempting to access a freed object, Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution.
In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit this vulnerability. In addition, compromised Web sites and Web sites that accept or host user-provided content or advertisements could contain specially crafted content that could exploit this vulnerability. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force users to visit these Web sites. Instead, an attacker would have to convince users to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or Instant Messenger message that takes users to the attacker’s Web site.
An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less affected than users who operate with administrative user rights.
NOTE: This is the vulnerability used by China hackers to spy and scam Gmail Accounts.
Tags: 6.0, 7, 8, china, gmail, google, hackers, internet explorer, microsoft, vulnerability
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January 10th, 2010 ~ nicola
In April 2009, Oracle announced that it had agreed to acquire Sun. Since Sun had acquired MySQL the previous year, this would mean that Oracle, the market leader for closed source databases, would get to own MySQL, the most popular open source database.
If Oracle acquired MySQL on that basis, it would have as much control over MySQL as money can possibly buy over an open source project. In fact, for most open source projects (such as Linux or Apache) there isn’t any comparable way for a competitor to buy even one tenth as much influence. But MySQL’s success has always depended on the company behind it that develops, sells and promotes it. That company (initially MySQL AB, then Sun) has always owned the important intellectual property rights (IPRs), most notably the trademark, copyright and (so far only for defensive purposes) patents. It has used the IPRs to produce income and has reinvested a large part of those revenues in development, getting not only bigger but also better with time.
If those IPRs fall into the hands of MySQL’s primary competitor, then MySQL immediately ceases to be an alternative to Oracle’s own high-priced products. So far, customers had the choice to use MySQL in new projects instead of Oracle’s products. Some large companies even migrated (switched) from Oracle to MySQL for existing software solutions. And every one could credibly threaten Oracle’s salespeople with using MySQL unless a major discount was granted. If Oracle owns MySQL, it will only laugh when customers try this. Getting rid of this problem is easily worth one billion dollars a year to Oracle, if not more.
Sign the Petition – Save MySQL
Tags: oracle, petition, save mysql, sun
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January 6th, 2010 ~ nicola
Political websites have been hacked over the past 24 hours to leave leaders with red faces.
A report on BBC News said that visitors to Spain’s EU presidency website were greeted by an image of comedy character Mr Bean instead of the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
The government said that the site – www.eu2010.es – had not been attacked and that a hacker had taken a screenshot of the homepage to make a photo montage using a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. Visitors found an image of Mr Bean complete with a benign smile and the words ‘Hi there’.
Tags: eu2010.es, hacked, revenge, xss
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December 14th, 2009 ~ nicola
Christmas is coming, and with this the New Year! Wishes to all.
We’ll see you soon.
~ nicola
Tags: new year, sealckers, wishes, xmas
Published in: Announcement, Stuffs | 1 Comment »
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