Cumulative Patch Released for BizTalk Server
By Scott Bekker
Microsoft on Wednesday put out a cumulative patch for its BizTalk Server enterprise integration products, fixing two newly discovered vulnerabilities. The most serious of the two problems could allow a attackers to execute code of their choice.
The vulnerabilities earned the patch in bulletin MS03-016 a severity rating of "important" on Microsoft's threat scale for BizTalk Server 2002 customers. The problems were rated "moderate" for BizTalk Server 2000.
The first flaw only affects BizTalk Server 2002 because it arises from a problem in the way BizTalk Server 2002 exchanges documents using the HTTP format, a feature not found in the original 2000 version of BizTalk. A buffer overrun in the component used to receive HTTP documents allows an attacker to execute code on BizTalk Server.
Microsoft laid out two mitigating factors for the flaw. The HTTP receiver is not enabled by default, and any arbitrary code would run in the security context of IIS, which can be limited to a user account.
The other flaw is related to SQL Injection and affects both BizTalk Server 2000 and BizTalk Server 2002. The flaw is one of those requiring an attacker to lure a privileged user into navigating to a crafted URL query string. The user, who would have to have privileges within BizTalk's Document Tracking and Administration Web interface would be unlikely to be a highly privileged SQL Server user, Microsoft's bulletin says.
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.