If you use Oracle, especially Oracle Application Server, it would be prudent to install the critical new patches right away. More than 40 buffer overflow vulnerabilities were found; some allow remote unauthenticated users to compromise your systems. (#1) Also if you are totally dependent of Kerberos, there's a critical vulnerability listed in #2.
On another topic, it's just three weeks to SANS largest Network Security conference. NS2004 in Las Vegas has a spectacular program: sixteen tracks of hands-on training by America's greatest audit and security instructors plus a big tools expo. Here's what one recent attendee said: "SANS training is the most comprehensive and valuable training a security professional can complete (JK Stanford, US Department of Energy). Another confirmed the SANS promise, "It gave me the tools and knowledge to hit the ground running and make an immediate contribution to my organization." (Charles Hamby, Univ. of Alaska)
See all the upcoming training programs at www.sans.org
Alan
@RISK is the SANS community's consensus bulletin summarizing the most important vulnerabilities and exploits identified during the past week and providing guidance on appropriate actions to protect your systems (PART I). It also includes a comprehensive list of all new vulnerabilities discovered in the past week (PART II).
Part I is compiled by the security team at TippingPoint (www.tippingpoint.com) as a by-product of that company's continuous effort to ensure that its intrusion prevention products effectively block exploits using known vulnerabilities. TippingPoint's analysis is complemented by input from a council of security managers from twelve large organizations who confidentially share with SANS the specific actions they have taken to protect their systems. A detailed description of the process may be found at http://www.sans.org/newsletters/cva/#process
Description: The Oracle Database server, the Oracle Application server, the Oracle Enterprise Manager, the Oracle E-Business and the Oracle Collaboration suites contain multiple buffer overflows (numbering over 40) and SQL injection vulnerabilities, which may be exploited to execute arbitrary code on the server(s). Some of the flaws in the Database and the Application server can be exploited by a remote unauthenticated attacker, whereas the flaws in the Enterprise Manager can be exploited only with valid user credentials. The Collaboration and the E-Business suite customers have been advised to apply the appropriate Database and Application server patches; hence, the flaws in these applications could also be exploited by remote unauthenticated attackers. In the configurations using Oracle as a back-end database, the flaws may be leveraged via SQL injection vulnerabilities in the front-end web scripts. The default accounts provide another avenue for exploitation. The technical details regarding many of the buffer overflows have been publicly posted. Further details are expected to be released in the upcoming months.
Status: Oracle has released patches listed in the Oracle Security Alert #68. Given the fact that relevant technical information regarding some of the overflows has been posted, and that some of the flaws may be exploited by remote unauthenticated attackers, the patches should be applied on a priority basis. The Center for Internet Security (CIS) has released security benchmarking tools for Oracle, which may help in hardening the database security.
Council Site Actions: A majority of the reporting council sites that have Oracle implementations and are responding to this vulnerability. Most of these sites are currently evaluating and testing the patches. Some sites plan to patch the systems as soon as possible, while other sites will patch during their next regularly scheduled system update process. Several sites commented that their Oracle database servers are isolated from external networks and thus the threat is greatly reduced. One site is monitoring for any unusual network connections to systems that are running Oracle products.
Description: Kerberos, a network protocol created at MIT, is used to provide strong authentication for client/server applications. The MIT Kerberos implementation is widely used by many network vendors and Linux/Unix flavors. The protocol uses Abstract Syntax Notation (ASN.1) encoded data for communications. The libraries that handle the ASN.1 decoding contain multiple "double free" vulnerabilities. The problem occurs because when an error is encountered in decoding an invalid ASN.1 object, the memory allocated for that ASN.1 object is freed twice. The double free vulnerabilities affect the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC), krb524d daemon etc. The KDC authenticates a client, and provides the client with "tickets" that can be used to access other kerberized services. The double-free vulnerabilities in the KDC may be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to possibly execute arbitrary code on the KDC server or to cause a denial-of service to the KDC server. The KDC server compromise may result in compromising the entire organization ("Kerberos realm"). An attacker controlled KDC server can be further used to compromise the Kerberos clients. The krb524d daemon converts a Kerberos version 5 ticket to a Kerberos version 4 ticket. An unauthenticated attacker may leverage the double free flaws in krb524d daemon to execute arbitrary code. In many cases, the krb524d daemon runs on the KDC. Hence, this compromise may also result in compromising the KDC and the entire Kerberos realm. The double free vulnerabilities are also present in the "krb5_rd_cred()" function; however, an attacker would require authentication credentials to exploit these flaws. Note that the double free memory bugs are generally harder to leverage to execute arbitrary code, and the exploit code tends to be platform dependent (as opposed to be universal). Hence, a widespread exploitation of these flaws is less probable. Exploit code is not currently available. The technical details required to leverage the flaws can be obtained by examining the patch files.
Status: MIT has released patches for multiple Kerberos versions. Apply the appropriate patches, and rebuild the software. Version krs5-1.3.5 release will fix all these flaws. Multiple Linux vendors, Sun and Cisco have released patches. For the status of other vendors, please refer to the CERT advisories.
Council Site Actions: Three of the reporting council sites are using the affected software. Two of these sites will patch their systems during the next regularly scheduled system update process. The third site has a very large implementation of Kerberos. They began patching critical servers on August 31st with a second round of patching to begin early next week.
Description: IBM DB2 database contains two buffer overflow vulnerabilities, which can be potentially exploited to execute arbitrary code on the database server. The discoverers of the flaw have not released any technical details regarding these flaws, which have been rated as "High". Other advisories with a similar rating from the discoverers have included overflows that require minimal user privileges or flaws that can be exploited by remote unauthenticated attackers. Hence, although the @RISK rating for this item is currently "MODERATE" due to lack of any more information, the DB2 administrators should apply the patches on a priority basis. The technical details are scheduled to be released on December 1, 2004. It may also be possible to "binary diff" the patches to obtain more information about the flaws.
Status: IBM has released the patches. Upgrade DB2 version 8.1 to Fixpak 7, and DB2 version 7.x installations to Fixpak 12.
Council Site Actions: Three council sites are running the affected software. One site is reviewing the potential impact and will likely patch their systems on an accelerated schedule. The other two sites have notified their support staff, but no other action has been taken at this time.
Description: WinZip, the most popular archiving software on Windows platform, has been downloaded over a 100 million times. The software contains buffer overflow vulnerabilities that may be triggered by a specially crafted zip file. The flaws may be exploited by an email or a webpage that entices a user to open a malicious zip file. No technical details regarding the flaws have been posted. Note that many viruses like Beagle have globally spread via emails with a malicious zip attachment.
Status: WinZip has released version 9.0-SR1 to fix the flaws. An additional benefit this version offers is - if a user double clicks an executable file in a zip archive, the user is prompted before the file is executed. This feature can help to limit the spread of viruses.
Council Site Actions: Most of the reporting council sites are running the affected software and plan to distribute the new version during their next regularly scheduled system update process. One site does not officially support the software and thus plans no action at this time.
Description: LHA is a file compression utility similar to zip and gzip. It ships with many Linux distributions and has been ported to BSD, Solaris and other operating systems. The software contains a stack-based overflow that may be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the LHA process. In addition, the software contains a remote command execution vulnerability that is triggered upon opening a specially crafted archive, which has a directory name containing shell meta-characters. Note that the software is used by many virus scanners to unpack LHA archives, and web browsers to automatically uncompress LHA archives upon download. Hence, an attacker can exploit the flaw via a specially crafted email or a malicious web page. Limited technical details about the flaws have been posted.
Status: Official vendor patches are not yet available. Red Hat has released updated LHA packages.
Council Site Actions: Two of the reporting council sites are running the affected software on either Red Hat or Debian Linux systems. One site has already made the patches available via their Up2date server. The other site has a large installation of Red Hat and Debian systems. The Red Hat systems have already been updated and the Debian systems will be updated once the patch is released. Any systems which need a manual update will be patched later this month.
Description: The Cisco devices running IOS can be configured for remote management via telnet or reverse telnet. Under such a configuration, the IOS contains a vulnerability that can be triggered by specially crafted TCP packets to the devices' telnet or reverse telnet ports. The vulnerability can be exploited to cause a denial-of-service to the management services. The device refuses connections to the management services via RSH, SSH, telnet, reverse telnet, HTTP (in certain cases) or Data Link Switching protocols. Although no technical details regarding the flaw have been publicly posted, the vulnerability is reportedly being exploited in the wild. Note that the vulnerability does not affect any packet processing/forwarding functions of the device, or the device access via SNMP/console.
Status: Cisco will release the patches soon. Until the patches are available, a number of workarounds have been suggested. These include disabling the telnet and using SSH for remote management, and blocking access to the devices' management ports from the Internet via ACLs.
Council Site Actions: All of the reporting council sites are running the affected software. Some of these sites are not using telnet, but SSH for management of their network devices, thus they are not affected by the vulnerability. Other sites block external access to their routers and thus consider this a reduced threat. Most of the sites plan to distribute the patches during their next regularly scheduled system update process.
Description: Titan, an enterprise class FTP server for Windows platforms, reportedly contains a heap-based buffer overflow. The overflow can be triggered by supplying an overlong command argument (over 20480 bytes). The flaw can be exploited by an authenticated user, possibly "anonymous", to execute arbitrary code on the server. A proof-of-concept exploit has been publicly posted.
Status: Vendor not confirmed, no patches available.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or widespread use at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: An exploit has been released for the Citadel bulletin board system's USER command overflow vulnerability discussed in a prior issue of the @RISK newsletter.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or widespread use at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
This list is compiled by Qualys ( www.qualys.com ) as part of that company's ongoing effort to ensure its vulnerability management web service tests for all known vulnerabilities that can be scanned. As of this week Qualys scans for 3693 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
(c) 2004. All rights reserved. The information contained in this newsletter, including any external links, is provided "AS IS," with no express or implied warranty, for informational purposes only. In some cases, copyright for material in this newsletter may be held by a party other than Qualys (as indicated herein) and permission to use such material must be requested from the copyright owner.
==end==
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