e-mail scam announcing Fidel Castro's funeral ... and nasty malware to your computer., (Sun, May 23rd)

There are two public broadcast TV stations at Colombia. We received a report that a e-mail is out there claiming to be from one of the stations and announcing they have the video of Fidel Castro's funeral:


The URL points to a UK server and downloads a nasty little malware done in Visual Basic that changes Windows parameters and recolects info from your computer. The trojan used to upload the malware is located on the same directory:

We encourage Web server admins to keep updated security patch and avoid default configurations on web servers that could allow attackers to upload these kind of files to your webserver. This backdoor is pure php and, as you can see, has a lot of useful options.
Please keep in mind also that clicking URL links inside e-mail is dangerous. Always go to the web server typing yourself the URL.
-- Manuel Humberto Santander Pelez | http://twitter.com/manuelsantander | http://manuel.santander.name
(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

SANS 2010 Digital Forensics Summit - APT Based Forensic Challenge, (Sat, May 22nd)

In conjunction with the 2010 SANSDigital Forensics and Incident Response Summit...there is a contest!
To quote Rob Lee...
The 2010 Digital Forensics and Incident Response Summit's focus this year is examining and advancing the digital forensic professional to deal with advanced threats such as the APT and organized crime. Understanding how many of these crimes take place is crucial to creating lethal forensicators armed with the knowledge and skills to analyze complex cases. I asked Jonathan Ham and Sherri Davidoff (who co-authored the sell-out Forensics 558: Network Forensics course and created many successful contests at - forensicscontest.com) to create a contest based partially on how the APT might try and trigger a compromise to steal intellectual property via a targeted attack via spear phishing.


I'm proud to announce the Jonathan and Sherri have created an amazing contest that will challenge you to use sophisticated skills and help you see the types of attacks that could be infecting your networks today. Using published information based on the Aurora attacks they set out to recreate a sequence of events that demonstrate the challenge investigators will face when examining compromises of clicking on links via a targeted spear phishing attack. This contest is a step in the right direction to help educate and challenge forensic professionals around the country. It also provides a good example of some of the discussions we will cover at the 2010 Forensic Summit: Malware analysis, Network Forensics, and the Advanced Persistent Threat. Jonathan and Sherri will announce the winners at the Forensic Summit on July 8. We hope you win the challenge and will attend the 2010 Forensic Summit, July 8, 9 in Washington D.C.
The contest itself is available over a the SANSComputer Forensics Blog.
Have fun!
-- Rick Wanner - rwanner at isc dot sans dot org (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

MySQL 5.1.47 is now available - http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/, (Fri, May 21st)

-- Rick Wanner - rwanner at isc dot sans dot org (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

2010 Digital Forensics and Incident Response Summit, (Fri, May 21st)

One of the big events of the year for digital forensics practitioners and incident responders is coming up quickly. The SANS Digital Forensics and incident Response Summit takes place in Washington, DC on July 8th and 9th, 2010.
Judging by the reviews from people who attended last year's summit if you have an interest in digital forensics or incident response this is the must attend event of the year.
More info is available over at the SANSForensics Blog.
The detailed agenda available from the event page at sans.org.
Even if you can't make it, or you need to be convinced of the value, you can always check out the presentations from the 2008 and 2009 versions of the summit.

-- Rick Wanner - rwanner at isc dot sans dot org (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Is this version of PuTTY legit?, (Thu, May 20th)

Write in from Andy (thanks Andy!) asking today ifhttp://putty.very.rulez.org/ is a legit site to download putty (the popular tool to connect from a Windows box to Unix boxes via Telnet/SSH, etc.).
How did Andy find this site you ask? Well, if you go to Google and type in Putty you'll notice that the above URL is SEO'ed ABOVE the actual putty.org website.
So far, when I downloaded both versions (from the above site, and from putty.org) the md5's match up, so right now, they are legit copies. I'm not accusing rulez.org of doing anything inappropriate, don't get that impression. I'm just using an abundance of caution, heck, they may be a legit mirror. But as far as I can tell, they aren't on the authorized mirrors list, found here.
So, we prefer that you get your PuTTY downloads from the correct site. Putty.org. Which, if you click on the download link, it will redirect you to here.
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
Which is the actual download link.
Thanks Andy for writing in and staying vigilant about watching those URL's!
UPDATE: A write in reminds us that using gpg to verify the packages is preferred. I agree.

-- Joel Esler | http://blog.joelesler.net | http://twitter.com/joelesler
(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Bind patches are out, (Thu, May 20th)

Several versions of Bind were updated with patches this morning. The patches, according to the release notes found here, read as follows:
Named could return SERVFAIL for negative responses from unsigned zones.
So if you are running Bind, be sure and update here.

-- Joel Esler | http://blog.joelesler.net | http://twitter.com/joelesler (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

MS10-030 - Critical: Vulnerability in Outlook Express and Windows Mail Could Allow Remote Code Execution (978542) - Version:1.2

Severity Rating: Critical - Revision Note: V1.2 (May 19, 2010): Removed erroneous references to Windows Mail when installed on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Also corrected the bulletin replacement information for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista update packages.Summary: This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user visits a malicious e-mail server. 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 impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

MS10-031 - Critical: Vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Could Allow Remote Code Execution (978213) - Version:1.1

Severity Rating: Critical - Revision Note: V1.1 (May 19, 2010): Added an Update FAQ to explain the bulletin-only changes. There were no changes to the security update files or detection logic. Customers who have already successfully updated their systems do not need to take any action.Summary: This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a host application opens and passes a specially crafted file to the Visual Basic for Applications runtime. If a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for May 2010

Revision Note: V1.2 (May 19, 2010): Removed erroneous references for MS10-030 to Windows Mail when installed on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Also added note to the affected software for MS10-031 to clarify that the updates for Microsoft Office apply to all supported Microsoft Office suites and other Microsoft Office software that contain a vulnerable version of VBE6.dll.Summary: This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for May 2010.

EFF paper about browser tracking, (Wed, May 19th)

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)has published a paper on browsers being tracked by it's unique fingerprint. It turns out our browsers are more unique than we would like to think they are so it is possible for websites to track users around using the unique fingerprint. While it may not be possible to know the exact user's identity, tracking from one web location to another is definitely a possibility. User agent sting, system fonts, screen resolutions and much more of the computer attributes all contributes to the unique fingerprint of computer + browser combination. For those of you really concerned about your privacy, maybe it's time to randomize the timezone settings, fonts and screen resolution frequently (joking). Disabling Javascript and active contents help with this a little bit but you need to decide whether privacy is worth losing the ability to view the active content.
Full paper can be found at https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf
(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Canonical Display Driver Vulnerability, (Tue, May 18th)

Microsoft released a security advisory [1] with details about a so far unpatched vulnerability in the canonical display driver. All system with the Aero theme enabled are vulnerable.
Theoretically, code execution is possible, but according to Microsoft unlikely. However, the vulnerability would allow a DoS attack by crashing the system. The quick fix for the problem is to turn off aero.
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/2028859.mspx

------

Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.

SANS Technology Institute

Twitter (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Microsoft Security Advisory (2028859): Vulnerability in Canonical Display Driver Could Allow Remote Code Execution

Revision Note: V1.0 (May 18, 2010): Advisory published.Summary: Microsoft is investigating a new public report of a vulnerability in the Canonical Display Driver (cdd.dll). Although it is possible that the vulnerability could allow code execution, successful code execution is unlikely due to memory randomization. In most scenarios, it is much more likely that an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could cause the affected system to stop responding and automatically restart.

Upcoming MySQL patch fixes several critical vulnerabilites, (Sun, May 16th)

William wrote in to let us know that the changelog to upcoming release to MySQL, version 5.1.47, has been released, and it appears this release fixes several critical vulnerabilities and probably should be applied as quickly as is reasonable. What is interesting is that although a relatively detailed changelog is available which describes in some detail the vulnerabilities being addressed, which could be interesting to attackers, Icould not find any information on when the 5.1.47 release would be available.
If anyone can provide a pointer to this release information, please pass it on to us.

-- Rick Wanner - rwanner at isc dot sans dot org (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.org Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

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