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Zero-day WMF flaw underscores patch problems
Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2006-01-12

For four days in January, network administrators and security-savvy home users had a choice: Download and install an unofficial open-source fix for the critical flaw in the Windows Meta File (WMF) format or wait an estimated week for an official patch from Microsoft.

Comments Mode:
What Microsoft needs to be doing... 2006-01-12
Eric (2 replies)
Re: What Microsoft needs to be doing... 2006-01-13
Matthew Murphy (1 replies)
They're very much customer-driven, just not by the customers you might think. They're "driven" by large corporate customers that think of IT as a non-necessity, a resource. They also have resources to throw behind occasional risk management in the face of a REPORTED zero-day threat. Publicly-known exploitation is *NOT* the worst-case for these companies. Accordingly, they'll put up with decent response and virtually zero preemptive mitigation.

Further, I think this vulnerability shows how flawed the "they should audit and review, and not work on new code" argument is. Developers of other technologies (i.e., wine) missed the same erroneous feature in their own implementation of Windows Metafile support.

Further, in a codebase as large as that of Windows, being secure "for the most part" may mean leaving several dozen holes. An attacker finds one before you do... and you're just as hosed as you would be today.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11368/32952#32952
Alternative solution 2006-01-13
mxb (2 replies)
Re: Alternative solution 2006-01-13
DSMatthews
Re: Alternative solution 2006-01-13
Anonymous
Make'em pay! 2006-01-13
assurbanipal
The Squander of MS Admins && Users 2006-01-13
Anonymous (1 replies)
Re: The Squander of MS Admins && Users 2006-01-16
Anonymous (1 replies)
Does any one see this 2006-01-13
Anonymous
Patch from Guilfanov was not the only one 2006-01-16
Juha-Matti Laurio







 

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