Microsoft Video ActiveX Control Zero-Day exploit: CCIP says take action immediately to mitigate vulnerability

The New Zealand government Centre for Critical Infrastructyre Protection would like to bring people's attention to the Microsoft Security Advisory 972890 that was released July7.

Microsoft have announced a vulnerability in Microsoft Video ActiveX Control that allows remote code execution. This is reported to affect versions of Windows XP and Window Server 2003.

CCIP is bringing this to your attention as this vulnerability has been reported as being actively exploited in the wild.

MITIGATION

Administrators are advised to take the following mitigation steps immediately.

There is currently no patch to correct this issue. However you can set the kill-bit to mitigate this vulnerability.

Microsoft have provided a way to automatically implement the workaround by following the instructions under "Fix It For Me" in the following Knowledge Base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972890

Alternatively the following quoted text can be included in a .REG file and imported into your registry.

---BEGIN QUOTE---
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX
Compatibility\{0955AC62-BF2E-4CBA-A2B9-A63F772D46CF}]
"Compatibility Flags"=dword:00000400
---END QUOTE---

Please note that in addition to the class identifier listed in the above example there is a full list of class identifiers in the
Suggested Actions-->Workarounds section of the Microsoft Advisory: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/972890.mspx

It is recommended that all of them are implemented.

There is also a writeup on Microsoft's Security Response Centre Blog.