Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Today we released MS09-029, which addresses vulnerabilities related to EOT font files. To answer a few commonly asked questions, here is a brief FAQ regarding the update: Q: What is the EOT file format? A: EOT stands for Embedded OpenType Font. EOT support in Microsoft applications has existed for many years.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Hi Everyone, This is Dave Forstrom, group manager for our security response communications team. We have just posted Microsoft Security Advisory 973472, which highlights a vulnerability in Microsoft Office Web Components. Specifically, the vulnerability exists in the Spreadsheet ActiveX control and while we’ve only seen limited attacks, if exploited successfully, an attacker could gain the same user rights as the local user.
Monday, July 13, 2009
We are aware of public attacks on the Internet exploiting a vulnerability in the Office Web Components Spreadsheet ActiveX control (OWC 10 and OWC11). Microsoft has released an advisory with further information available here. What’s the attacking vector? This vulnerability could be used for remote code execution in a “browse and get owned” scenario.
Monday, July 06, 2009
We are aware of active attacks exploiting a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft’s MPEG2TuneRequest ActiveX Control Object. We have released advisory 972890 providing guidance to help our customers stay protected. In this blog post, we’d like to go into more detail to help you understand this issue. What’s the attack vector?
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Benefits of IE Protected Mode One of the vulnerabilities addressed in MS09-019, CVE-2009-1140, involves navigating to a local file via a UNC path, ex: \\127.0.0.1\c$. This roundabout way of navigating to a file is necessary to execute local content such that it runs in the Internet Explorer Internet zone, where scripting is enabled.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Recently, we found a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft’s DirectShow platform (quartz.dll) when processing the QuickTime format. We have released advisory 971778 providing guidance to help protect customers. We’d like to go into more detail in this blog to help you understand: Which configurations are at risk? Why is this a high risk vulnerability?
Monday, May 18, 2009
Security Advisory 971492 provides official guidance about the new IIS authentication bypass vulnerability. We’d like to go into more detail in this blog to help you understand: Am I at risk? If so, what could happen? How can I protect myself? Which IIS configurations are at risk? Only a specific IIS configuration is at risk from this vulnerability.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
MS09-010 addresses vulnerabilities in Word converters used by WordPad and by Office to load files saved in old file formats. Some of you probably saw this bulletin and thought “I never open documents from versions of Word prior to Word XP,” and you may be interested in reducing your attack surface.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
This afternoon, we posted Security Advisory 969136 describing a new vulnerability in PowerPoint while parsing the legacy binary file format. Unfortunately, we discovered this vulnerability being used to deploy malware in targeted attacks. We expect this blog post will: Help you protect your organization from being exploited, and Help you analyze suspicious PowerPoint files.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
The Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) have built-in ActiveX control support. ActiveX support allows a richer experience when interacting with an Office document. For example, a document author could use the Safe-For-Initialization Office Web Components (OWC) ActiveX control to retrieve data from an intranet data source. Office applications’ prompting behavior
