MS09-059
Threat LevelDamageDistribution

Effects 

MS09-059 is not categorized as virus, worm, Trojan or backdoor. It is an important vulnerability in the Windows Local Authority Subsystem Service on Windows 7/2008/Vista/2003/XP/2000, which allows denial of service attacks to be launched.

LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service) provides an interface for managing local security, domain authentication and Active Directory processes. However, there is a vulnerability because the Windows NTLM (NT Lan Manager) implementation in LSASS does not properly handle specific malformed packets during the authentication process.

If exploited successfully, it could cause the vulnerable system to automatically restart.

This vulnerability is usually exploited by creating a specially crafted packet and sending it during the HTML authentication process.

If you have a Windows 7/2008/Vista/2003/XP/2000 computer, it is recommended to download and apply the security patch for this vulnerability. Click here to access the web page for downloading the patch.