SupportSoft's ActiveX control that allows a.o. remote assistance has been updated fixing a security issue leading to remote code execution.

• Vendor info
• US-CERT coordination
• CVE-2006-6490
• NIST: National Vulnerability Database

Security products affected:

• Symantec

But do note there are many more sources for these controls to sneak in through.

Therefore we highly recommend to future proof it by using the workarounds to prevent it from being used even if something would reinstall it at some point in the future.

Consider disabling ActiveX for all but windowsupdate and/or this list of killbits:

{01010200-5e80-11d8-9e86-0007e96c65ae}
{01010e00-5e80-11d8-9e86-0007e96c65ae}
{01011300-5e80-11d8-9e86-0007e96c65ae}
{01013A00-5E80-11D8-9E86-0007E96C65AE}
{01013B00-5E80-11D8-9E86-0007E96C65AE}
{01013C00-5E80-11D8-9E86-0007E96C65AE}
{01013D00-5E80-11D8-9E86-0007E96C65AE}
{01013F00-5E80-11D8-9E86-0007E96C65AE}
{01014000-5E80-11D8-9E86-0007E96C65AE}
{01014100-5E80-11D8-9E86-0007E96C65AE}
{01014B00-5E80-11D8-9E86-0007E96C65AE}
{01111c00-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01111e00-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01111f00-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01112500-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01112800-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01113300-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01114200-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01114300-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01114400-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01114500-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01114600-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01114700-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01114800-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}
{01116e00-3e00-11d2-8470-0060089874ed}

A .reg file for setting these killbits can be downloaded, use at your own risk.

--
Swa Frantzen -- NET2S