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Kaspersky Lab and Microsoft cooperate to close new zero-day vulnerability |
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Kaspersky Lab and Microsoft collaborated to close a serious vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was known to have been used by the Stuxnet worm, the industrial espionage tool that is designed to gain access to the Siemens WinCC operating system, which collects data and monitors production in industrial environs.  Since its emergence in July 2010, IT security specialists have watched Worm.Win32.Stuxnet closely. Kaspersky Lab said its experts have researched Stuxnet’s capabilities at length, discovering in the process that in addition to the vulnerability that was detected originally, it also uses four other critical vulnerabilities in Windows when processing LNK and PIF files. While one of these vulnerabilities was exploited by the infamous Kido (Conficker) worm in early 2009, the other three were previously unknown and exist in the current versions of Windows. Stuxnet also uses another vulnerability to propagate, which exists in the Windows Print Spooler service that can be used to send malicious code to a remote computer where it is then executed. This allows the infection to spread to computers using a printer or through shared access to one. Having infected a computer connected to a network, Stuxnet then attempts to spread to other computers. Kaspersky Lab detected and reported this vulnerability to Microsoft, which released a path on 14 September, 2010 to close the loophole. Kaspersky Lab has also reported another another zero-day vulnerability in the Stuxnet code, classified as an ‘Elevation of Privilege’ (EoP) vulnerability, which could be exploited by the worm to gain full control over the infected computer, while a similar EoP-class vulnerability was detected by Microsoft’s experts. Both will be corrected in future security updates for Windows operating systems, the company said. |
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