Missed it Live? On Demand March VEF Now Available + Live Q&A Answered

Miss our live Vulnerability Expert Forum webinar earlier this week? Never fear, I've put the recording + slides + Q&A all together here for your convenience. Take your pick.

Additionally, find this month's Security Bulletin here, a list of all the Audit IDs here, and the PDF of the presentation here. If you have additional questions not listed here, please feel free to comment below and we'll get our Research Team to answer.

LIVE Q&A

During the webinar there were some great questions brought up that we wanted to get answered immediately. Below are the live audience questions and our Research Team's answers:

Q: Which one is more vulnerable to attacks - .com or .net sites and client computers attached to them?

DJ: Both are equally vulnerable. The domain extension, in this case, does not have a whole lot of significance.

JD: It's not the name or location of the site that makes it vulnerable, it's the content.

Q: Are the article sources available?

DJ: Yes they're available and below.

CTx:

• Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It's .Seizable
• Should US intelligence agency have a role in protecting electric grid?
• Social Engineer Gets into RSA Conference for Free
• Juniper buys web security company for $80 million

IT Admin:

• Windows 8 Kill Switch
• Chrome Adopted As US State Department "Alternative" Certified Browser
• Chinese Spy on NATO Officials using Facebook

Researcher:

• IE10 ForceASLR
• Final Conclusion to the LulzSec Story (3 articles I referenced) - http://www.reuters.com/article/wp-content/uploads/09/us-cyber-arrests-martyn-idUSBRE82807M20120309, http://gizmodo.com/5890886/read-the-full-lulzsec-indictments-right-here, http://gizmodo.com/5890879/how-the-feds-turned-lulzsecs-leader-against-his-own
• Duqu Mystery Language
• Vulnerability in AMD CPUs causes Stack Corruption

Q: Is the kill switch only controllable by MS or are admins able to adminstrate that functionality?

DJ: Details are scarce, but from all appearances Microsoft has sole control over that, seeing as the applications come from their app store.

JD: My best guess is probably not, this isn't something you normally pass around. It will likely be kept as a last resort case for Microsoft. Killswitches in the past are known for being very rarely, if ever, used.

Q: There seems to be a security update that's in Microsoft's update list but does not seem to have an associated bulletin number. Because of that, I'm having difficulty finding out more information about it. It's KB2647518, Update Rollup for ActiveX Killbits for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems. There's an Advisory for this at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2647518, and that page (that has various downloads and installation instructions) references a page with what I'd expect to be the usual descriptive bulletin info at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/2647518.mspx, but this page doesn't exist. Scanning this month's list of bulletins, it's not immediately apparent whether this is a patch without a bulletin number assigned to it, or if it may be included in one of the bulletins that were published this month. Do you have a handle on this? If so, what's up?

JD: This is a security update, but did not warrant a Bulletin. Try http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2647518 instead for the advisory. It basically just disables some ActiveX controls in third party software.