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Severity
High
Title
Microsoft Communicator Emoticon Denial of Service
Description

By issuing instant messages to a client which contain a very large number of emoticons it is possible to cause the Microsoft Communicator to become nonresponsive for a certain period of time. During this period of time the phone does not respond to incoming invite messages and can even be forced to go into an offline state, eventually requiring the phone to reregister.
 

Details
Category
Denial of Service
Vendor
Microsoft
Product
Microsoft Communicator
Released
2008-11-11
updated
2008-11-11
Response
Attempting to address the issue
Recommendations

Microsoft has acknowledged the issue and is working on correcting it.

 

In the short term it is recommended that a VoIP aware IPS product, such as VoIPguard, with signatures to detect attempts to exploit this issue, be implemented to prevent it from being exploited. Implementing best practices can limit the exposure of this issue.

 

Microsoft customers with a valid support agreement may wish to speak with their support contact in order to obtain further vendor details.

Tracking Id
VSRMS-2008-001
 

Each line represents an individual vulnerability or group of vulnerabilities. For example, "UCM Multiple Hardcoded Passwords" is presented here in a single line but was reported to Nortel as sixteen (16) individual vulnerabilities.

Severity Legend

Click on a level for description
Low

A low severity issue falls into one of two categories.  Firstly, there are those that are not directly exploitable and affect a single IP client, a small subset of the deployment, or are quite innocuous taken by themselves. In other words, they provide information which either involves only a small number (or single) client and that information requires considerable other information or effort to be useful to an attacker.  The other category of low severity issues includes those that are best practices which are not intended to directly mitigate an exploitable risk but to increase overall security robustness and demonstrate due diligence.

Medium

A medium severity issue is typically an issue which can lead to further exploitation or provides short-lived effect on a minimal number of clients.  It may not be immediately exploitable but provides sufficient information or access to move an attack closer to fruition.  Alternately it may provide unauthorized access not directly related to the VoIP portion of the network.

High

A high severity issue can be exploited to compromise one or more nodes within the deployment but may require authentication, especially when exploiting multiple systems simultaneously. In addition, it may be possible to protect against untrusted exploitation of the issue by deploying traditional security tools.

Critical

A critical severity issue can be exploited by an untrusted individual to compromise the entire deployment under review.  There are no security or protective mechanisms in place that will mediate exploitation of this vulnerability by an untrusted individual.

Vendor Response Legend

Patch available
Workaround proposed
Attempting to address the issue
No vendor response
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