Symantec, McAfee and CA all patch vulnerabilities.
Three of the biggest names in the security sector,
McAfee
,
Symantec
and
CA
, have all revealed details of flaws in their software which have been discovered and patched in recent months.
The most severe vulnerability was suffered by a wide range of
McAfee
products, including its flagship
VirusScan
and
Internet Security Suite
software. A buffer overflow error in the Subscription Manager ActiveX control could allow code to be executed from malicious websites, resulting in system compromise and remote access. The problem was discovered by
iDefense
researchers, who describe exploitation of the flaw as ‘trivial’ in their advisory,
here
. The issue was patched by
McAfee
automated updates in late March – some information from
McAfee
is
here
, and a
Secunia
alert, rating the issue ‘Highly Critical’, is
here
.
The
Symantec
issue also involves an ActiveX control, used by some of its
Norton
products including
Norton Internet Security 2006
. It could also be exploited by malicious websites to bypass security measures and possibly allow remote access, but is generally considered a less serious threat to users. Another
iDefense
advisory is
here
,
Symantec
‘s own alert is
here
and a
Secunia
summary is
here
.
iDefense
, alongside the
Zero Day Initiative
(
ZDI
), was behind the reporting of the
CA
flaws too, with two buffer-overflow issues affecting some of the company’s anti-virus and anti-spyware products. The vulnerabilities could only be exploited from the local system, and may have allowed escalated privileges. Details are
here
(from
CA
),
here
(from
iDefense
) and
here
(from
ZDI
), with another
Secunia
summary
here
.
All the reported problems have been fixed by updates and patch releases, which should be applied automatically in most cases. Anyone running the affected products is advised to ensure they are running the latest versions.
Posted on 11 May 2007 by
Virus Bulletin
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