Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Subscribe to our e-mail newsletters
For more info on a specific newsletter, click the title. Details will be displayed in a new window.
Security
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
More E-Mail Newsletters 
 

Microsoft warns of 'critical' flaw in Outlook Express

October 11, 2002 12:00 PM ET

IDG News Service - Microsoft Corp. released a security alert yesterday acknowledging a serious security hole in its Outlook Express e-mail client. The vulnerability, which was found in Outlook Express versions 5.5 and 6.0, could allow a remote attacker to take control of machines running Outlook Express using malicious code embedded in an e-mail message.
Microsoft rated the severity of the flaw as critical for end users but low for both Internet and intranet servers.
Outlook Express is a simplified version of Microsoft's Outlook e-mail application that is distributed with many versions of Microsoft Windows.
According to a security alert posted on Microsoft's Web site, the vulnerability was discovered in Outlook Express code that is used to support Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, an e-mail security standard that allows Internet users to send and receive encrypted e-mail messages.
Ironically, the security hole was found in code that is used by Outlook Express to generate a message warning users that problems occurred when trying to verify the authenticity of an incoming e-mail. According to the Microsoft alert, the code used to generate the error message can be exploited and used to create a buffer overflow condition on the machine running Outlook Express.
Buffer overflow attacks allow attackers to circumvent program code designed to prevent an application from executing extraneous or 'arbitrary' code. In this case, the buffer overflow would allow an attacker to place and execute code on the machine running Outlook Express, causing the e-mail client to fail or taking advantage of the user's permissions to execute commands.
And because Outlook Express contains a "preview pane" feature that displays the contents of an e-mail message without requiring the user to open it, users could unwittingly launch an attack just by selecting the e-mail message in their in-box, displaying the e-mail's contents in the preview pane and running the malicious code.
Outlook Express Version 5.5 Service Pack 2 and 6.0 Service Pack 1, which is included in Windows XP Service Pack 1, aren't affected by the vulnerability, nor is Microsoft Outlook, the e-mail client that is sold as part of Microsoft's popular Office suite of products, according to the Microsoft security alert and a statement from Aviram Jenik, a researcher at BeyondSecurity.com Inc., which first discovered the vulnerability and reported it to Microsoft.
In addition to the security alert, Microsoft issued a patch for the vulnerability on its Web site. However, the company today acknowledged that the patch itself contains an error that could confuse Outlook Express 6.0 users who have installed its service packs for Windows XP or Internet Explorer 6.
The fix for the Outlook Express flaw is included in those service packs, freeing users that are running them from the need to install the new patch, Microsoft said. But according to an update that was added to the "Caveats" section of yesterday's advisory, the patch displays an incorrect warning message when users with the service packs try to install it.
The warning message should notify those users that the patch isn't needed. Instead, Microsoft said, it reads: "This update requires Internet Explorer 6.0 to be installed."
Microsoft's announcement is the 58th security alert the company has posted since the beginning of the year.








Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Additional Resources

POLL RESULTS
Accelerate your knowledge of the IT world you inhabit by viewing the results of a series of polls taken by your IT peers. These polls of 100+ IT professionals each are available for full viewing. They cover key topics such as virtualization, processor performance, green IT, cloud computing and many others. Be a part of the buzz.
WHITE PAPER
Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn't be. To that end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to simplify operations, maintenance, and support. Kodak offers a best-practices model. One company provides support for both scanner and software, for fast problem resolution without vendor finger-pointing. Download now!
WHITE PAPER
Utilizing demand intelligence improves the precision of pricing, product assortments, channel/store placement, and promotion, which are all essential for sustainable revenue management performance. Learn more, download this free whitepaper today.

White Papers & Webcasts

Centralized Data Backup and Your WAN
Is your organization prepared to tackle the massive challenge of protecting your data in a cost effective and timely manner? With a growing...  

Why Compliance Pays
This OnDemand webcast explores the relationship that firms with best compliance records have higher revenue, greater customer retention, lower financial losses from data...

An All-in-One Approach to Web Security
Granting web access to employees poses challenges to IT administrators and introduces unique security risks. Even as companies have perfected their security techniques...  

Best Practices for Managing Business Risks from the Use of IT
(Source: Symantec) Based on exhaustive benchmarks conducted by the IT Policy Compliance, this session highlights the relationship between business risks and use of...

The Hidden Dangers of Spam
Beyond the well-understood productivity drain that spam inflicts on businesses, threats posed by illicit email circulating through a network are causing many security...  

Managing And Protecting Your Ever Increasing Mobile Assets
(Source: Absolute Software) Your users are becoming more mobile each day. This is great for productivity - yet challenging for IT control. Natalie...

Open Source Security Myths Dispelled
(Source: Astaro) Open Source Software is computer software whose source code is available to the general public. This openly viewable nature...  

Sun OpenSSO Enterprise Webinar
(Source: Sun) This webinar replay discusses Sun OpenSSO Enterprise innovation--the single, open-source solution that helps your business solve the challenges around internal access...

Best Practices for Backing Up VMware® with Veritas NetBackup™
VMware® is used by enterprises large and small to increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their IT operations. With this in mind, Symantec...  

Agile Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for Rapid ROI
(Source: IBM) Content rich business processes are a core feature of daily operations at just about any organization today. Very often these essential...