Dangerous New Microsoft Vulnerability Revealed

[DrCorvette]

The System Administration, Networking, and Security (SANS) Institute on Monday identified what it called "probably the most dangerous programming error" found in workstations running Windows 95, 98, 2000, and NT 4.0.
A security alert issued by the cooperative research and education group states that users running any of the affected operating systems are vulnerable to a total compromise when they preview or read an infected e-mail -- without having to open an attachment http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000718S0004

[This message has been edited by DrCorvette (edited 07-18-2000).]

[daveleau]

Thanks for the info. For those that don't read the article, there is a workaround here ( http://www.sans.org/newlook/resources/win_flaw.htm ) that is about half way down. Hopefully, they will have a patch soon.
Dave

[socalgal]

Thanks again for the heads up Dr.Vette! It's appreciated! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

One can also check for the email notifications I receive from MS - Security Bulletins here
http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/007513.html

Dave, thanks for that SANS article, great site! I wasn't aware of the port blocking - now completed in my BID firewall.ini. I've also subscribed to Security Alert Consensus weekly bulletin. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Many thanks to you both! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif


Question: Is the MS "Fix" supposed to mean the workaround is not necessary? Nevertheless, I have done the workarounds.

[nilknarf]

Thanks for the heads up!

Now I have to decide how to go about fixing this on our 100 PC's and 50 laptops!

This seems to be a vunerability though e-mail programs, right? If so, Would I need to worry too much with our e-mail as we use Groupwise, not IE or Outlook?

Any thoughts on that would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tim


[This message has been edited by nilknarf (edited 07-19-2000).]

[Richard_Cranium72]

I've been "attacked" from a chat room. The maggot said "here's a bomb for you a**hole" Quickly I dropped my isp connection. Too late, some of the images and placeholders remained on the screen after several boots. I didn't remember his name I freaked out so bad. Finally all the junk went away. So I have always thought that you could get viruses from other sources besides downloads or E-mail attachments, but I'm not educated enough in this arena to make allegations or statements to anyone in that topic of discussion.. just my experience. DrVette