Start 2006 With A Temporary Patch?

M Edwards

Windows IT Pro

InstantDoc ID #48928

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The Windows metafile vulnerability is undoubtedly a story that will carry over from 2005 into 2006. Ilfak Guilfanov brings everyone a gift in the form of a temporary patch while Microsoft works on an official patch.

Guilfanov writes in his Hex Blog, "The fix does not remove any functionality from the system, all pictures will continue to be visible. It should work for Windows 2000, XP SP2 and XP 64-bit. It might also work for XP SP1 or XP without any service packs applied. This is a DLL which gets injected to all processes loading user32.dll. It patches the Escape() function in gdi32.dll. The result of the patch is that the SETABORT escape sequence is not accepted anymore."

Tom Liston as SANS Internet Storm Center said that he has "taken this [patch] apart and looked at it very, very closely. It does exactly what it advertises and nothing more. [...] This should allow for Windows to display WMF files normally while still blocking the exploit. We want to give a huge thanks to Ilfak Guilfanov for building this and for allowing us to host and distribute it."

So there you have it. Madmen are creating still more working exploits. So, if you feel adventurous then consider using this patch to temporarily protect your systems.

That said, I'm off to celebrate the New Year! Happy New Year to you all !

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