heise SSL Guardian: protection against unsafe SSL certificates

Https connections are often used to transfer important data, such as passwords, PINs, or credit card numbers. The browser ensures that the sender can be identified with a valid certificate and that the transferred data are encrypted. An error in the Debian Linux distribution has generated numerous certificates that are child’s play to crack. Many servers still use these weak certificates, even though it is impossible to establish a secure connection using them. The heise SSL Guardian checks the SSL certificates and warns you when it detects a weak one.

All Windows applications that use Windows CryptoAPI will be protected by SSL Guardian. This includes Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, as well as Windows Mail. However, SSL Guardian does not protect Firefox and Opera as these use their own crypto libraries and not CryptoAPI. In order to protect Firefox, the Firefox SSL Blacklist extension is needed, as this has a similar function.

The Guardian support Windows 2000, XP and Vista Operating Systems and is free.
There are two versions with different sized lists. The first is for users that have adequate bandwidth and time. The second is a third as large, but still detects more than 98% of the weak certificates.

More info and download: heise Security

F-Secure Client Security Version 7.12 Released

This service release fixes issues from the previous version of the product. For details, please see the Release Notes.

What is new in 7.1x release:

-Windows Vista support
-F-Secure Client Security 7.1x supports Windows Vista 32-bit versions.
-Improved real-time scanning performance on removable drives
-Enhanced logic of scanning to enable faster scanning for large files that reside on removable drives.
-Updated scanning report to elaborate what happens
-Scanning report has been updated to explain in more detail why certain files have been skipped.
-Faster spyware removal
-Spyware removal is significantly faster with this release. While previously the spyware scan was reinitiated with removal, now the scanning maintains information about its state.
-Reduced memory consumption
-The product has now been optimized to use less memory. There is a significant decrease in the amount of memory consumed. This shows as improved overall performance.
-Internet Shield IPv6 support
-IPv6 support in Internet Shield is now two-fold: the minimal Internet Protocol version 6 support enables user to block all IPv6 traffic if needed. This has been extended with ability to create firewall rules and handle IPv6 alerts in application control for IPv6 addresses. This extension is limited to Vista only, while the minimal support is available on all supported platforms.
-Updated identification and removal of conflicting programs (sidegrade)
-Sidegrade has been updated to include more common conflicting products, and cleaned from the unnecessary removals that would not cause conflict with our software.
-New manual database installation tool
-A new tool for updating protection databases manually, called fsdbupdate, installs all the latest database updates for customers with a valid subscription.
-Improved System Control with DeepGuard for latest malware types
-System Control with DeepGuard has been updated to protect from the very latest types of malware attacks.
-Remote Application List for System Control
-Administrator can configure System Control to deny or allow applications remotely with Policy Manager.
-Includes all previous hotfixes

This release is for the following operating systems:

-Windows Vista 32-bit, SP1
-Windows XP Home Edition with SP0 /SP1 / SP2 /SP3
-Windows XP Professional Edition with SP0 /SP1 / SP2 /SP3
-Windows XP Media Center Edition with SP1
-Windows 2000 Workstation with SP4 Rollup 1 or higher

Note: when F-Secure Client Security 7.1x is taken into use, F-Secure Policy Manager needs to be version 7.1x or later.

Product home page: F-Secure

Highly critical vulnerabilities reported in vBulletin

Some highly critical vulnerabilities have been reported in vBulletin, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct script insertion attacks.

Input passed via “PHP_SELF” or via the “do” parameter when requesting a missing page is not properly sanitised before being logged. This can be exploited to insert arbitrary HTML and script code, which is executed in an administrator’s browser session in context of an affected site when the malicious logs are being viewed.

Reportedly, the vulnerabilities can be exploited to inject and execute arbitrary PHP code on an affected system.

It affect version 3.7.2 and 3.6.10 PL2. Prior versions may also be affected.

Solution: update to version 3.7.2 PL1 or 3.6.10 PL3.

Sources: Secunia and vBulletin.