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A new zero day exploit for Internet Explorer from version 6 to 11 is active and being exploited by attackers, the group using this exploit CVE-2014-1776 are currently targeting US-based firms tied to the defense and financial sectors and till now there’s no available patch for such exploit.
Microsoft has issued a security advisory
The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability. The vulnerability exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated. The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer. An attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website.
Furthermore, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user that’s why users whose accounts have fewer rights could be less impacted by others.
Microsoft Suggested Workarounds
- Deploy the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 4.1 (EMET).
- Set Internet and Local intranet security zone settings to “High” to block ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones.
- Configure Internet Explorer to prompt before running Active Scripting or to disable Active Scripting in the Internet and Local intranet security zone.
- Unregister VGX.DLL. Modify the Access Control List on VGX.DLL to be more restrictive.
- Enable Enhanced Protected Mode For Internet Explorer 11 and Enable 64-bit Processes for Enhanced Protected Mode
A new zero day exploit for Internet Explorer from version 6 to 11 is active and being exploited by attackers, the group using this exploit CVE-2014-1776 are currently targeting US-based firms tied to the defense and financial sectors and till now there’s no available patch for such exploit.
Microsoft has issued a security advisory
The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability. The vulnerability exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated. The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer. An attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website.
Furthermore, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user that’s why users whose accounts have fewer rights could be less impacted by others.
Microsoft Suggested Workarounds
- Deploy the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 4.1 (EMET).
- Set Internet and Local intranet security zone settings to “High” to block ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones.
- Configure Internet Explorer to prompt before running Active Scripting or to disable Active Scripting in the Internet and Local intranet security zone.
- Unregister VGX.DLL. Modify the Access Control List on VGX.DLL to be more restrictive.
- Enable Enhanced Protected Mode For Internet Explorer 11 and Enable 64-bit Processes for Enhanced Protected Mode
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