Update 5-1-2014: We can confirm Cisco customers have been targets of this attack. For the latest coverage information and additional details see our new post on the VRT blog.

The recent discovery of a new Internet Explorer zero-day exploit underlines how exposed web browsers are to vulnerabilities for which a patch is yet to be released. Cisco is aware of the issue and is releasing IPS signature 4256-0 and Snort signatures 30794, 30803 to detect the exploitation of this vulnerability. You can read more details from Cisco here.

The vulnerability affects Internet Explorer versions 6 to 11 running on Windows. Microsoft has released an advisory detailing how users can mitigate the exploitation of the vulnerability in the absence of a full patch. These mitigations include:

Deploy “Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 4.1”. This optional update makes it harder for malware writers to exploit memory vulnerabilities and helps to block attacks that use these techniques.

Disable ActiveX and Active Scripting on unknown websites. The functionality provided by these scripting languages is used in this particular attack, but as with JavaScript, many websites rely on scripting to function. Many websites may be rendered unusable without this functionality.

Unregister VGX.dll. This library is required to use Vector Markup Language (VML), a now deprecated vector graphics format previously used in Microsoft Office applications. Interestingly, this is not the first time that this particular library has been implicated in vulnerabilities.

The attack involves a malicious Flash SWF file creating a vector object that is passed to the browser. The zero-day bug is then triggered, corrupting the memory allocated to this object. This memory corruption allows the SWF file to inject a malicious payload into the memory. When the browser attempts to access the vector object, the malicious payload is executed and the attacker can take control of the machine.

This attack mechanism is reminiscent of the technique used by VUPEN to win the Pwn2Own 2013 competition by compromising IE 10. This attack also involved exploiting memory corruption vulnerability in VGX.dll, the same library used in today’s vulnerability (see CVE-2013-2551. Indeed, this in turn is reminiscent of another VML buffer overrun vulnerability in VGX.dll. CVE-2013-0030 also involved memory corruption and could be exploited to compromise Internet Explorer versions 6 to 9.

Looking through the lists of CVEs shows that the same dll has been implicated in three other vulnerabilities since 2006, CVE-2006-4868, CVE-2007-1749 and CVE-2011-1266. All of these vulnerabilities involved errors in the way memory was allocated by the dll that allowed attackers to execute code on affected machines, very similar to the attack that we are seeing today.

Given that this particular library has been implicated in six vulnerabilities and that Vector Markup Language is now deprecated in favour of SVG, maybe the best mitigation technique is to follow Microsoft’s advice and to unregister the dll for good. Three major vulnerabilities affecting this library have been discovered in the last 14 months, how many more have yet to be found or used?

Craig Williams contributed to this post.

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