The vulnerability in Outlook isn’t the only security hole on Microsoft’s mind (see separate story). The Redmond software giant has also issued a security bulletin on a Privilege Elevation vulnerability in NT. Three developers in India: Prasad Dabak, Sandeep Phadke and Milind Borate, have written a program able to exploit this vulnerability and have published it on the internet. With their program, a non- administrative user can gain debug level access and grant themselves local administrative privileges. Microsoft has posted hotfixes. No such protection is yet available for Back Orifice, a remote Windows administration tool developed by the Cult of the Dead Cow, a Canadian hacker collective. CDC says it will release Back Orifice at hacker conference Defcon VI in Las Vegas on August 1. The self-installing utility is said to allow users to control and monitor Windows machines running over a network. If what CDC says is true, hackers will soon be able to remotely control Windows users’ file systems, registries, networks, passwords and processes. The end of computing as we know it, or another grandiose hacker claim? We’ll all find out soon enough.
