Microsoft patches now include a new exploitability index. This new rating attempts to quantify when/if an exploit is likely to become available for a given vulnerability. The rating also attempts to take into consideration how stable a given exploit is likely to be.

Personally, I think this is a good idea, especially if they keep their methods for rating issues consistent and transparent. Already, a number of vendors have said that they will be adding support for the new index value in their tools and software. As might be expected, reaction has been mixed from the community, though, I have yet to see any response that included how such information could be truly harmful.

You can read Microsoft’s published information here.

I hope more vendors embrace this seemingly small detail. I think it is helpful for more than a few organizations overwhelmed by patch cycles. It may not be the “holy grail of patch risk”, but it is likely better than what we have now.

How does your organization plan to use this new information, if at all? Drop us a comment and let us know!

OK, now we have some more bad news on the DNS front. There have been new developments along the exploit front that raise the bar for protecting DNS servers against the cache poisoning attacks that became all the focus a few weeks ago.

A new set of exploits have emerged that allow successful cache poisoning attacks against BIND servers, even with the source port randomization patches applied!

The new exploits make the attack around 60% likely to succeed in a 12 hour time period and the attack is roughly equivalent in scope to a typical brute force attack against passwords, sessions or other credentials. The same techniques are likely to get applied to other DNS servers in the coming days and could reopen the entire DNS system to further security issues and exploitation. While the only published exploits we have seen so far are against BIND, we feel it is likely that additional targets will follow in the future.

It should be noted that attackers need high speed access and adequate systems to perform the current exploit, but a distributed version of the attack that could be performed via a coordinated mechanism such as a bot-net could dramatically change that model.

BTW – according to the exploit code, the target testing system used fully randomized source ports, using roughly 64,000 ports, and the attack was still successful. That means that if your server only implemented smaller port windows (as a few did), then the attack will be even easier against those systems.

Please note that this is NOT a new exploit, but a faster, more powerful way to exploit the attack that DK discovered. You can read about Dan’s view of the issue here (**Spoiler** He is all about risk acceptance in business. Alex Hutton, do you care to weigh in on this one?)

This brings to mind the reminder that ATTACKERS HAVE THE FINAL SAY IN THE EVOLUTION OF ATTACKS and that when they change the paradigm of the attack vector, bad things can and do happen.

PS – DNS Doberman, the tool we released a couple of days ago, will detect the cache poisoning if/when it occurs! You can get more info about our tool here.

Now your organization can have a 24/7 guard dog to monitor key DNS resolutions and protect against the effects of DNS cache poisoning, DNS tampering and other resolution attacks. Our tool is an easy to use, yet quite flexible and powerful solution to monitoring for attacks that have modified your (or your upstream ISPs’) resolutions for sites such as search engines, software updates, key business partners, etc.

DNS Doberman is configured with a set of trusted host names and IP address combinations (yes, you can have more than one IP per host…) which are then checked on a timed basis. If any of your monitored hosts returns an IP that the DNS Doberman doesn’t trust – then it alerts you and your security team. It supports a variety of alerting methods to support every environment from home users to enterprises.

You can learn more about the tool and download the FREE version from the link below. The FREE version is completely useable and if it suits your needs, you are welcome to continue to use it indefinitely. The FREE version is restricted to 5 hosts and only checks each host once per hour. Registered users ($99.95) will receive support, minor version upgrades and the ability to check an unlimited number of hosts every 15 minutes!

To learn more or get your copy today, please visit the MSI main web site, here.

Attackers are apparently zigging when we thought they would be zagging again. An article posted yesterday talks about how attackers have passed on using the exploits published by the common frameworks and instead, have been pretty widely using a more advanced, capable and less known tool to exploit the DNS vulnerabilities that have been in the news for the last few weeks.

In the article, HD Moore, a well known security professional (and author of Metasploit), discusses how the attackers seem to be bypassing the exploit that he and his team published and instead have been using another exploit to perform illicit attacks. In fact, the attackers used their own private exploit to attack the Breakingpoint company that Moore works for during the day. I was very interested in this approach by the attackers, and it seems almost ironic somehow, that they have bypassed the popular Metasploit tool exploits for one of their own choosing.

This is interesting to me because when an exploit appears in Metasploit, one would assume that it will be widely used by attackers. Metasploit, after all, makes advanced attacks and compromise techniques pretty much “click and drool” for even basic attackers. Thus, when an exploit appears there, many in the security community see that as a turning point in the exploitability of an attack – meaning that it becomes widely available for mischief. However, in this case, the availability of the Metasploit exploit was not a major factor in the attacks. Widespread attacks are still not common, even as targeted attacks using a different exploit has begun. Does this mean that the attacker community has turned its back on Metasploit?

The answer is probably no. A significant number of attackers are likely to continue to use Metasploit to target their victims. Our HoneyPoint deployments see plenty of activity that can be traced back to the popular exploit engine. Maybe, in this case, the attackers who were seriously interested had a better mechanism available to them. Among our team there is speculation that some of the private, “black market” exploit frameworks may be stepping up their quality and effectiveness. These “exploits for sale” authors may be increasing their skills and abilities in order to ensure that their work retains value as more and more open source or FREE exploit frameworks emerge into the market place. After all, they face the same issues as any other software company – they have to have high value in order to compete effectively with low cost. For exploit sellers this means more zero-day exploits, more types of evasion, more options for post-exploitation and higher quality of the code they generate.

In some ways, tools like Metasploit help the security community by giving security teams exploitation capabilities on par with basic attackers. In other ways, perhaps they also hurt the security effort by enabling more basic attackers to do complex work and by driving up the quality and speed of exploit availability on the black market. It is hard to argue that such black market efforts would not be present anyway as the attackers strive to compete amongst themselves, but you have to wonder if Metasploit and tools like it serve to speed up the pace.

There will always be tools available to attackers. If they aren’t widely available, then they will be available to a specific few. The skills to create attack tools are no longer the arcane knowledge known to a small circle of security mystics that they were a decade ago. Vendors and training companies have sliced and diced the skills into a myriad of books, classes, training sessions, conventions and other mechanisms in order to “monetize” their dissemination. As such, there are many many many more folks with the skills needed to develop attack tools, code exploits and create malware that has ever increasing capability.

This all comes back to the idea that in today’s environment, keeping anything secret, is nearly impossible. The details of the DNS vulnerability were doomed to be known even as they were being initially discovered. There are just too many smart people with skills to keep security issues private when there is any sort of disclosure to the public. There are too many parties interested in making a name, gaining some fame or turning a buck to have any chance at keeping vulnerabilities secret. I am certainly not a fan of total non-disclosure, but we have to assume that even some level of basic public knowledge will eventually equal full disclosure. We also have to remember, in the future, that the attacker pool is wider and deeper than ever before and that given those capabilities, they may well find mechanisms and tools that are beyond what we expect. They may reject the popular wisdom of “security pundits from the blogosphere” and surprise us all. After all, that is what they do – surf the edges and perform in unexpected ways – it just seems that some of us security folks may have forgotten it….