Microsoft Warns of Thumbnail Hole in Windows

In a security advisory, Microsoft warns of a new, previously unknown security hole in Windows which can be exploited to inject and execute arbitrary code. Sample code that demonstrates how to go about an exploit is already in circulation. In December 2010, two people gave a presentation entitled "A Story about How Hackers' Heart Broken by 0-day" at the "Power of Community" security conference. Their presentation documents describe a security hole in Windows that is connected to the display of thumbnails and can reportedly be exploited locally via Explorer as well as remotely via WebDAV. Displaying a file with a specially crafted thumbnail is all that is required for a successful attack. The vulnerability is exploited by setting a negative number of colour indexes in the colour table (biClrUsed). According to Microsoft's security advisory, all versions of Windows except Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are vulnerable. Microsoft say that they are currently not aware of any attacks which try to exploit the reported vulnerability. However, this could soon change, as a Metasploit module for creating suitable malicious files was released almost simultaneously with Microsoft's advisory.

Source: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Microsoft-warns-of-thumbnailhole-%20in-Windows-1163562.html