Web Security


Microsoft Anti-Exploit Tool Protects Against Adobe Zero Day

Although Adobe doesn’t have a patch ready yet for the newly disclosed vulnerability in the company’s Reader application, Adobe and Microsoft security officials said that Microsoft’s recently released Enhanced Mitigation Environment Toolkit 2.0 can protect users against the exploit that is currently circulating.


A pair of security researchers have implemented an attack that exploits the way that ASP.NET Web applications handle encrypted session cookies, a weakness that could enable an attacker to hijack users’ online banking sessions and cause other severe problems in vulnerable applications. Experts say that the bug, which will be discussed in detail at the Ekoparty conference in Argentina this week, affects millions of Web applications.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has doled out grants worth up to
$32 million in total to a pack of universities dedicated to rethinking
everything about the Internet from from its core routing system to its
security architecture and addressing the emergence of cloud computing
and an increasingly mobile society. Read the full article. [Computerworld]

HEI Hospitality, owner and operator of upscale hotels operating under
the Marriott, Sheraton, Westin and other monikers, has sent letters
informing some 3,400 customers that their credit card data may have been
compromised. Read the full article. [IDG News Service]

Attackers are using a previously unknown exploitation technique that bypasses both ASLR and DEP to exploit the unpatched Adobe Reader bug that Adobe warned users about on Wednesday. The exploit works on machines running either Windows Vista or Windows 7 and is also dropping a file on compromised machines that is signed using a stolen, valid digital certificate.

A federal magistrate judge has recommended that Microsoft be given
ownership of 276 internet addresses used to control “Waledac,” a massive
botnet that the software company has been working to bring down. Read the full article. [The Register]