Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/02/09/zdi_0day_bug_disclosure_batch/

ZDI spills beans on 22 zero-day bugs

Vulnerability broker had given software vendors 6 months to fix them ...

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 9th February 2011 12:48 GMT

The Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) has discussed the existence of unpatched flaws in 22 software applications from vendors including Microsoft, CA, EMC, HP and IBM.

Advisories from the vulnerability broker giving a broad outline of the flaws and suggesting possible workarounds were published on Monday – at least a full six months after vendors were first notified of the flaws – in accordance with ZDI's recently modified disclosure policy.

The HP/TippingPoint organisation, which buys venerability information from security researchers, used to wait until vendors got around to patching bugs before spilling the beans. Six months ago this policy was changed so that vendors were given a deadline of 180 days before ZDI went public over flaws.

ZDI is the most well-known player in the security marketplace that pays researchers for vulnerability findings, normally along with proof-of-exploit code to establish that there is a genuine problem. From that point on, ZDI handles the sometimes protracted process of liaising with vendors as the latter develops and tests security updates.

In the meantime, ZDI adds detection for attacks based on a vulnerability to its range of intrusion-prevention appliances. The 22 newly disclosed, unpatched flaws affect a range of consumer and enterprise technologies including Lotus Notes, HP Data Protector Client and CA ETrust Secure Content Manager, as well as Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel. Most of the flaws involve code injection risks, a class of vulnerability that would normally lead to them getting treated as critical.

In other vulnerability-related news, Adobe and Microsoft both pushed out scheduled security updates on Tuesday.

Redmond's latest monthly patch batch involves 12 bulletins and includes fixes for three outstanding zero-day vulnerabilities. These three previously unpatched (and critical) security vulnerabilities involve Internet Explorer's handling of cascading style sheets, Windows "thumbnail" and the "possible remote code execution on IIS through the FTP service", security service firm Qualys reports.

More details in an overview from the Internet Storm Centre here, or Microsoft's rather less readable version here.

February's patch batch also kills Windows autorun on USB devices, if not CDs and DVDs, as discussed in our earlier story here.

Elsewhere, also on Tuesday, Adobe patched security bugs in Flash Player, Shockwave and Adobe Reader. Sophos has a detailed run-down of the Adobe updates here. ®