IE exploit on the loose, going to yellow

IE exploit on the loose, going to yellow
Update: We just received a report that a particular site uses the "createTextRange" vulnerability to install a spybot variant. It is a minor site with insignificant visitor numbers according to Netcraft's "Site rank". Folks, as Lorna predicted yesterday, it didn't take long for the exploits to appear for that IE vulnerability. One has been making the rounds that pops the calculator up (no, I'm not going to point you to the PoC code, it is easy enough to find if you read any of the standard mailing lists), but it is a relatively trivial mod to turn that into something more destructive (in fact one of our readers, Matt Davis, has provided us with a version that he created that is more destructive). For that reason, we're raising Infocon to yellow for the next 24 hours. Workarounds/mitigation Microsoft has posted this and suggests that turning off Active Scripting will prevent this exploit from working. You could, of course, always use another browser like Firefox or Opera, but remember that IE is so closely tied to other parts of the OS, that you may be running it in places where you don't realize you are. One of our readers asked whether DropMyRights from Microsoft would provide any protection. We haven't had an opportunity to test that out. I understand a snort signature to detect the exploit has been checked in to bleeding-snort, I'll update the story with a URL for the sig as soon as I find it. References Original Secunia bulletin: http://secunia.com/advisories/18680/ Microsoft blog: http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/03/22/422849.aspx ------------------------ Jim Clausing, jclausing --at-- isc.sans.org I will be teaching next: Reverse-Engineering Malware: Malware Analysis Tools and Techniques - SANS Secure Japan 2021	Jim 416 Posts ISC Handler Mar 23rd 2006
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Workarounds/mitigation

References