Fighting malware and spam

Word for Mac exploit spotted

Patch Tuesday flaw targeted by vulnerability.

A vulnerability in the Apple Mac version of Microsoft Word, covered by a patch in this month's Patch Tuesday security update, has been subject of an attempted exploit seen by researchers at Symantec.

The exploit document was observed to crash most versions of Word on Windows, and closer analysis showed it had been created on a Mac and contained shell code and several trojans.

'The discovery continues a trend of vulnerabilities being seen exploited in the wild shortly after patches for them have been released, the so-called "Exploit Wednesday" effect,' said John Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. 'It seem likely that this apparent link between patches and exploits is largely attributable to the publicity given to vulnerabilities making exploits for them stand out more sharply from the mass of malcode processed by labs every day.'

More details of the latest exploit are at Symantec's blog here.

12 October 2007

Tags: exploit, mac, symantec, vulnerability, word.    del.icio.us   digg this

Poll

Virus Bulletin

• Same malware, different code
• Can you spare a seg?
• Kernel mechanics of Rustock
• Early warning approaches to combat typosquatting
• The challenges of collecting and monitoring URLs that point to malware
• Norman Network Protection Appliance
• Anti-spam comparative review July 2009