A zero-day attack on Microsoft XP has been discovered, emphasising the need for businesses to be using the latest software to prevent data loss. http://www.storetec.net/news-blog/new-microsoft-application-security-problem.
Ico underlines importance of encryption after data loss
New microsoft application security problem
1. @StoretecHull
www.storetec.net
Facebook.com/storetec
Storetec Services Limited
New Microsoft Application Security Problem
A zero-day attack on Microsoft XP has been discovered, emphasising
the need for businesses to be using the latest software to prevent
data loss.
Having warned its users about the potential for such attacks at the
beginning of November, Microsoft is working on the problem and
has released suggestions for users that have been affected.
2. FireEye researchers Xiaobo Chen and Dan Caselden reported
uncovering the vulnerability in one of their blog posts and have stated
that the attack will only affect those using XP.
They said: "The vulnerability cannot be used for remote code execution
but could allow a standard user account to execute code in the kernel.“
Dustin Childs, Microsoft Trustworthy Computing group manager for
incident response communications, offered customers a temporary
solution: "Delete NDProxy.sys and reroute to Null.sys. For
environments with non-default, limited user privileges, Microsoft has
verified that the following workaround effectively blocks the attacks that
have been observed in the wild."
3. The attack also affects those who are using Adobe Reader 9.5.4,
10.1.6, 11.0.02 and prior. Such users are strongly advised to update to
the most recent version. Users running the most recent version will not
be affected by this security threat.
This security scare has led to the SANS Internet Storm Centre issuing
a plea for users to run the most recent version of software. It warns that
this security breach is just "the tip of the iceberg" and said that no task
was more urgent than to migrate to Windows 7 or 8 as soon as
possible.
4. The final set of hotfixes for Windows XP is expected in April 2014, and
therefore after that date malware authors know that their exploits will
wreak havoc against an unprecedented number of XP users. Any XP
users attempting to upgrade after this date will do so the software is
especially vulnerable to attacks, putting the security of their data at an
even higher risk.
Storetec News/Blogs."http://www.storetec.net/news-blog/newmicrosoft-application-security-problem". New Microsoft
application security problem. November 29, 2013. Storetec.