Hackers are using a new multiple-attack package composed of seven ActiveX exploits,
many of them never seen in the wild before, said a security company on Friday.

Fewer than half of the flawed ActiveX controls have been patched.

The attack framework probes Windows PCs for vulnerable ActiveX controls from
software vendors Microsoft
Corp., Citrix
Systems Inc. and Macrovision
Corp., as well as hardware makers D-Link
Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co.,
Gateway Inc., and Sony
Corp., said a Symantec
Corp. researcher.

"What's interesting about this attack is that there are so many vulnerabilities
in one attack that have not been seen in the wild previously," said Symantec's
Patrick Jungles, who wrote an analysis of the multi-strike package for customers
of the company's DeepSight threat service.

According to Jungles, visitors to compromised Web sites are redirected by a
rogue IFRAME to a malicious site serving the package. The attack pack tests
the victim's PC for each ActiveX control, detects whether a vulnerable version
of a control is installed, then launches an attack when it finds one.

Bugs in ActiveX, a Microsoft technology used most often to create add-ons for
the company's Internet Explorer (IE) browser, have always been common, but so
many serious flaws have been disclosed of late that some security experts have
recommended
users do without them.

The seven exploited in the package outlined by Jungles are a mix of old and
brand-new flaws. For example, Microsoft's own ActiveX vulnerability -- a bug
in IE's Speech API (application programming interface) -- was disclosed in June
2007, while the vulnerability in the Citrix Presentation Server Client control
harks back even further, to December 2006. Others, such as the ActiveX bugs
in D-Link's security Webcams and in Sony's ImageStation, are much more recent,
having been revealed in February.

Four of the seven ActiveX flaws -- those in the D-Link, Gateway, Sony and Macrovision
products -- have not been patched, said Jungles.

Assuming the exploit framework succeeds in compromising a PC, the hackers drop
a Trojan on the machine that turns it into a spam-spewing zombie; the Trojan
includes a rootkit component to mask the malware from anti-virus scanners.

Symantec added that while the initial IP address that sent users to the malicious
site was no longer infected with the IFRAME code, other addresses were redirecting
users.

"The list of IPs involved in the exploitation is by no means comprehensive,"
said Jungles, "because the nature of the exploitation indicates that several
other sites are likely forwarding victims." The IFRAME code, he continued,
had been found embedded in the legitimate sites' HTML and was at times distributed
via online advertisements; DNS poisoning, he said, was also suspected.

Jungles' report recommended that users apply patches, when they're available,
and set the "kill bit" on those ActiveX controls which have not yet
been updated by their makers.

» posted by abennett

Computerworld

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