CVE-2012-0003 Exploit ITW

S. Korean handlers are slow to take down the publicly distributed malicious code exploiting CVE-2012-0003, a vulnerability patched in Microsoft’s January 2012 patch release MS12-004. We have discussed with reporters that the code has been available since the 21st, and a site appears to have been publicly attacking very low numbers of Korean users over the past day or so. The site remains up at this time.

The exploit itself appears to be reliable and easy to replicate, so we expect to see this one showing up in the array of publicly available commodity exploit packs. Chatter from exploit developers show that “proof-of-concept” will be open sourced soon, resulting in the further distribution of the exploit over the next few days. While we were detecting the initial release of the code with a generic detection several years old, it is being updated to better identify the javascript and exploit used as “Exploit.x.CVE-2012-0003”. The very small number of visitors to the site were met with code developed to deliver a rootkit and set of spyware components. It appears that the rootkit components have been related to online gaming targets in the past half year or so.

The exploit attacks Windows Media Player code in winmm.dll and delivers a heap spray that somewhat surprisingly works on most Windows versions up through Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems SP 2.

Please ensure that your system is updated.