Randal T. Rioux

Not too long ago, CVE-2012-4681 (US-CERT Alert TA12-240A and Vulnerability Note VU #636312) was issued for a flaw discovered in Oracle Java (JDK and JRE 7 U6 and before), as well as version 6 U34 and before. This is a client-side vulnerability, which requires a user to initiate activity to be exploited. I will avoid dissecting the flaw in detail, as this information is widely available on the Web (a particularly good write-up is here). Keep in mind that Java is platform independent, and so is this exploit. The example here uses Internet Explorer on Windows 7 (with Java SE 7u3). However, Linux and OS X users shouldn’t feel excluded on this one! With Tenable's Unified Security Monitoring (USM) platform, comprised of SecurityCenter (SC), the Passive Vulnerability Scanner (PVS), and the Log Correlation Engine (LCE), we can track this exploit from start to finish.

Many customers have recently inquired about detection of video conferencing hardware and software, and Tenable’s research team has been developing additional PVS plugins to do just that.