Zero Day Vulnarability for Internet Explorer

Over the years most of you have been inundated with buzz words like virus, spyware, worm, trojan, rootkit and over the last year Zero Day has been popular. The zero-day term refers to an attack or virus which is previously unknown so no patch or virus defination is available to catch it on day zero.  It won’t be caught by your antivirus scanner because they don’t know about it yet. 

A Zero Day “Vulnerability” is the worst. This attack uses a flaw in a program such as the browser that allows code to execute with no warning to a user. You don’t have to be tricked into downloading anything. All you need to do is to visit a web site or in some cases just be connected to the internet. The only protection will be programs like WinPatrol that monitor for changes to your system.

This week Microsoft has released an advisory to protect users until a patch is available.  Click “Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution”. Microsoft advises some pretty serious work arounds including.

Set Internet and Local intranet security zone settings to "High" to prompt before running ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones


Configure Internet Explorer to prompt before running Active Scripting or to disable Active Scripting in the Internet and Local intranet security zone


Disable XML Island functionality


Restrict Internet Explorer from using OLEDB32.dll with an Integrity Level ACL


Disable Row Position functionality of OLEDB32.dll


Unregister OLEDB32.DLL


Use ACL to disable OLEDB32.DLL


Enable DEP for Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista and on Windows Server 2008


Disable Data Binding support in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

These are pretty drastic actions but this threat should be taken seriously. Most experts are recommending folks stop using Internet Explorer completely until Microsoft has a patch available. I’m among those experts who also recommends finding a new browser for a while. Personally, I’ve become a fan of Google Chrome which is now out of beta and has an official version 1.

Alternate Browsers in order of my preference:

Download FireFox

Download Google Chrome

Download Opera 

Download Apple Safari (You may have already be tricked into installing this along with iTunes)

Update: Microsoft has released an emergency patch to fix this serious vulnerability.  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-078.mspx

Click here to update

 

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FlashPix ActiveX ZeroDay Fix

My good buddy Alex over at Sunbelt Software alerted me to a new Zero Day vulnerability that has been announced by US-Cert(United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team). The bug was discovered and demonstrated yesterday by Krystian Kloskowski.

This is the kind of infection that can occur just by going to the wrong web page or reading an HTML document. You don’t have to download or agree to anything for this kind of threat to attack your computer.

The flaw was found in a file “DXTLIPI.DLL” which may or may not exist on your computer. This file is the container of an ActiveX control from Live Picture Corporation known as “FlashPix”.

The only available solution requires a change in the registry so the current version of this ActiveX will not be executed by Internet Explorer.

For those who aren’t comfortable using Regedit, I have created a registry script which will make the change for you. Just run the following to protect your computer. You can also save it to your computer and run it after download.

http://www.winpatrol.com/support/flashpixoff.reg

This script will set the kill bit for this ActiveX definition. If you’re using Netscape, it won’t run the script, it will just display the text contained in the script. Of course, if you’re using Netscape, you don’t have to worry about it anyway.

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