eEye Digital Security Protects from the New Critical Flaw in Windows

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eEye Digital Security has released a custom form of protection to immediately address a critical exploit circulating via a flaw in Microsoft Windows. The flaw would allow a remote attacker to take complete control of an infected system. Additionally, eEye confirmed that Blink, an Internet client security solution, provides proactive protection against this flaw. To proactively protect Windows users around the world, eEye has released a temporary patch that prevents the flaw from being exploited. For individuals and organizations interested in receiving eEye's temporary zero-day patch, a copy can be downloadedhere.

This unspecified vulnerability exists within multiple versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems and allows for a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code under the context of the logged-in user. This vulnerability can be exploited by visiting a malicious web site or opening a malformed Microsoft Office document.

This zero-day vulnerability has a very high impact since the source of the malicious payload can be any site on the Internet. An even more critical problem is generated when clients are administrators on their local hosts, which would run the malicious payload with Administrator credentials. The impact of this exploit can vary from the reported Trojan installation to full system compromise by coupling this attack with a privilege escalation vulnerability to acquire SYSTEM access, which would provide the attacker complete control over the compromised host.

The most potent attack method used by this vulnerability is conducted by embedding a malicious .ANI file within an HTML web page. Doing so allows the vulnerability to be exploited with minimal user interaction by simply coaxing a user to follow a hyperlink and visit a malicious web site. Other exploit vectors exist including Microsoft Office applications since they also rely on the same .ANI processing code, making email delivery also a potent threat by using Microsoft Office attachments.

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