Microsoft's December 8th Patch Tuesday updates are now available. Abstracts (with links) of Microsoft's security bulletins and advisories are shown below.

Network Box joined the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) in the summer of 2009, and publishes its MAPP synchronised active protection updates on the second Tuesday of each month. The Network Box MAPP Report for December 2009 is now available for download.

MS09-069 resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow denial of service if a remote, authenticated attacker sends a specially crafted ISAKMP message while communicating through Internet Protocol security (IPSEC) to the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) on an affected system.

MS09-070 resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The more severe of these vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker sent a specially crafted HTTP request to an ADFS-enabled Web server. An attacker would need to be an authenticated user in order to exploit either of these vulnerabilities.

MS09-071 resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. These vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if messages received by the Internet Authentication Service server are copied incorrectly into memory when handling PEAP authentication attempts. An attacker who successfully exploited either of these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. Servers using Internet Authentication Service are only affected when using PEAP with MS-CHAP v2 authentication.

MS09-072 resolves four privately reported vulnerabilities and one publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. 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. An ActiveX control built with Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL) headers could also allow remote code execution.

MS09-073 resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft WordPad and Microsoft Office text converters. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a specially crafted Word 97 file is opened in WordPad or Microsoft Office Word. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same privileges as the user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer privileges on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative privileges.

MS09-074 resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Office Project. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Project file. 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.

Network Box Security Response is PUSHing protection signatures for these, and other known, vulnerabilities. We do, however, recommend that customers use the Microsoft tools (Windows Update, etc) to apply Microsoft's Patch Tuesday fixes as soon as practical.

Back