Attack Vector | Microsoft Security Response Center

Assessing the risk of the October 2011 security updates

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Today we released eight security bulletins. Two have a maximum severity rating of Critical with the other six having a maximum severity rating of Important. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment. Bulletin Most likely attack vector Max Bulletin Severity Max Exploit-ability Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS11-081 (Internet Explorer) Victim browses to a malicious website.

Is SSL broken? – More about Security Bulletin MS12-006 (previously known as Security Advisory 2588513)

Monday, September 26, 2011

On January 10th, Microsoft released MS12-006 in response to a new vulnerability discovered in September in SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0. Here we would like to give further information about the technique used to exploit this vulnerability and workaround options Microsoft has released if you discover a compatibility issue after installing the update.

Protecting yourself from attacks that leverage fraudulent DigiNotar digital certificates

Sunday, September 04, 2011

Last week, we released Security Advisory 2607712, notifying customers that fraudulent digital certificates had been issued by certificate authority DigiNotar. We’d like to follow up on that notification in this blog post by explaining more about the potential risks and actions you can take to protect yourself from any potential attacks that would leverage those fraudulent certificates.

Vulnerabilities in DNS Server Could Allow Remote Code Execution

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Today we released MS11-058 to address two vulnerabilities in the Microsoft DNS Service. One of the two issues, CVE-2011-1966, could potentially allow an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability to run arbitrary code on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 DNS servers having a particular DNS configuration. We’d like to share more detail in this blog post and help you make a risk decision for your environment.

MS11-053: Vulnerability in the Bluetooth stack could allow remote code execution

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

The single Critical vulnerability in today’s batch of security updates addresses an issue in the Bluetooth stack. Your workstations’ risk to this vulnerability varies, depending on a number of factors. I’d like to use this blog post to outline those risk factors. How can I protect my system? The best way to protect any potentially vulnerable system is to apply the MS11-053 security update.

Assessing the risk of the June security updates

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Today we released 16 security bulletins. Nine have a maximum severity rating of Critical and seven have a maximum severity rating of Important. This release addresses several publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment. Bulletin Most likely attack vector Max Bulletin Severity Max Exploit-ability rating Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS11-050(IE) Victim browses to a malicious webpage.

MS11-044: JIT compiler issue in .NET Framework

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Today we have released MS11-044 to address CVE-2011-1271, a remote code execution vulnerability in the .NET framework. Here we would like to provide more technical information about this vulnerability and why we believe this issue to be unlikely to be exploited. This root cause of CVE-2011-1271 is that there was a bug in the JIT compiler which would cause it to mistakenly determine that a given object is always null (or non-null) and would omit certain checks.

Notes on exploitability of the recent Windows BROWSER protocol issue

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Earlier this week a PoC exploit for a vulnerability in the BROWSER protocol was released on Full Disclosure. There has been some discussion regarding whether this issue can result in Remote Code Execution (RCE) or is only a Denial of Service (DoS). This blog post provides details on the exploitability based on our internal analysis.

Assessing the risk of the February security updates

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Today we released twelve security bulletins. Three have a maximum severity rating of Critical and nine have a maximum severity rating of Important. This release addresses three publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment. Bulletin Most likely attack vector Max Bulletin Severity Max Exploit-ability Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS11-003(IE) Victim browses to a malicious webpage.

Regarding MS11-004, Addressing an IIS FTP Services Vulnerability

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Today we released MS11-004 to address a vulnerability in the Microsoft FTP service an optional component of Internet Information Services (IIS). In this blog, we would like to cover some additional technical details of this vulnerability. First, we want to clarify that the vulnerability lies in the FTP service component of IIS.