Microsoft Aims Its Target At Other Botnets

Last Wednesday Microsoft announced that it had been granted a court order that would help in tearing down Waledac botnet. Now after a few days later Microsoft announced that it has several other botnets in its target too.

Whole Computerworld article can be read here.

Vulnerability In Picasa

There has been found a vulnerability in Google Picasa. The vulnerability is caused due to an integer overflow error in PicasaPhotoViewer.exe when processing JPEG files. This can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow by tricking a user into opening a specially crafted JPEG file and e.g. zooming in. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in target system.

The issue affects PicasaPhotoViewer.exe version 3.6.95.25, included in Google Picasa 3.6 build 95.25. Older versions may be affected too. Users of Google Picasa should update their versions to 3.6 build 105.41.

Unpatched Vulnerability In Firefox

Mozilla released security updates for its products a few days ago. None of those affected the latest Firefox version 3.6. However, there has been found a new vulnerability and this time the latest version is affected.

The found vulnerability is caused due to an unspecified error and can be exploited to execute arbitrary code. At the moment, there's no patch or workaround available. Firefox users should avoid visiting untrusted websites and following untrusted links.

Mozilla Fixes Some Vulnerabilities

Mozilla has released security bulletins related to found issues in some of their products. Three of the found vulnerabilities are categorized as critical and two other as moderate. The latest 3.6 version of Firefox is not affected by any of these listed vulnerabilities.

Critical:
MFSA 2010-01 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.1.8/ 1.9.0.18)
*Affects:
- Firefox prior 3.5.8
- Firefox prior 3.0.18
- Thunderbird prior 3.0.2
- SeaMonkey prior 2.0.3

MFSA 2010-02 Web Worker Array Handling Heap Corruption Vulnerability
*Affects:
- Firefox prior 3.5.8
- Firefox prior 3.0.18
- SeaMonkey prior 2.0.3

MFSA 2010-03 Use-after-free crash in HTML parser
*Affects:
- Firefox prior 3.5.8
- Firefox prior 3.0.18
- Thunderbird prior 3.0.2
- SeaMonkey prior 2.0.3


Moderate:
MFSA 2010-04 XSS due to window.dialogArguments being readable cross-domain
*Affects:
- Firefox prior 3.5.8
- Firefox prior 3.0.18
- SeaMonkey prior 2.0.3

MFSA 2010-05 XSS hazard using SVG document and binary Content-Type
*Affects:
- Firefox prior 3.5.8
- Firefox prior 3.0.18
- SeaMonkey prior 2.0.3

Fresh versions can be obtained via inbuilt updater or by downloading from the product site:
Firefox
Thunderbird
SeaMonkey

Updates For Adobe PDF Products

There has been detected critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat PDF products. One of the vulnerabilities (CVE-2010-0186) could subvert the domain sandbox and make unauthorized cross-domain requests. The second patched vulnerability (CVE-2010-0188) could cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

Vulnerable are Adobe Reader 9.3 and earlier versions & Adobe Acrobat 9.3 and earlier versions. Users of Adobe Reader are recommended to update their versions to 9.3.1. For those Adobe Reader users who can't update to this version Adobe has provided Adobe Reader 8.2.1 update. Fresh versions are available here.

More information can be read from Adobe's security bulletin.

OpenOffice 3.2 Released

OpenOffice.org has released a new version of OpenOffice. The fresh version contains fixes for several vulnerabilities:
* CVE-2006-4339: Potential vulnerability from 3rd party libxml2 libraries
* CVE-2009-0217: Potential vulnerability from 3rd party libxmlsec libraries
* CVE-2009-2493: OpenOffice.org 3 for Windows bundles a vulnerable version of MSVC Runtime
* CVE-2009-2949: Potential vulnerability related to XPM file processing
* CVE-2009-2950: Potential vulnerability related to GIF file processing
* CVE-2009-3301/2: Potential vulnerability related to MS-Word document processing

More information can be found here. OpenOffice 3.2 can be downloaded here.

Fake AV With Online Support

Fake antivirus programs showing false alerts of different malware types is unfortunately quite common sight nowadays. Live PC Care named rogue AV differs from other similar ones by having support function included. Yellow "online support" -button in the program launches live online support chat session with a live "support agent". The purpose of this is to alleviate doubt and to convince unaware user to purchase the product.

The whole story can be read from Symantec's Blog.