Everyone who uses Computer Associates software should evaluate the critical buffer overflows (Item 1 below).
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@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).
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Part I is compiled by Rohit Dhamankar (rohitd_at_tippingpoint.com) at TippingPoint, a division of 3Com, 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 Computer Associates License Management software, which is bundled with most of the CA products, is designed to remotely manage and track licenses. This software contains a client (enabled by default) and a server component (disabled by default). Both the client and the server components contain multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities that can be triggered by specially crafted commands such as "PUTOLF", "GETCONFIG", "GCR" etc. These flaws can be exploited to execute arbitrary code with iSYSTEM/rooti privileges. eEye and iDefense advisories describe the structure of the various licensing commands, and how to craft malicious requests to leverage these flaws. Exploit code has already been included in the Metasploit tool (www.metasploit.com).
Status: CA has issued updates for various platforms. Upgrade to version 1.61.9 for the licensing software. The CA advisory lists the commands that may be used to locate the vulnerable CA packages. A workaround is to block ports 10203/tcp and 10204/tcp (ports used by the client component) and 10202/tcp (the port used by the server component) at the network perimeter to stop the attacks originating from the Internet.
Council Site Actions: Due to the late breaking nature of the vulnerability, we were unable to solicit council site input for this item.
Description: RealPlayer, a media player installed on millions of systems, contains a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability. The overflow can be triggered by a specially crafted Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) file. An SMIL file defines the lay out of a video presentation. The problem arises because the length of the "system-Screen-size" parameter in a SMIL file is not checked prior to copying it in a fixed size buffer. Hence, a "system-screen-size" longer than 256 bytes can trigger the overflow, which can be exploited to execute arbitrary code. Note that browsers such as Internet Explorer automatically open a SMIL file without user interaction. Hence, browsing a webpage or opening an email is sufficient for exploiting the vulnerability.
Status: Vendor confirmed, updates available. The RealNetwork's advisory also mentions fixing another buffer overflow in WAV file processing reported by NGSSoftware. The details of this vulnerability are not posted to the public mailing lists yet.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or widespread use, or is not officially supported at most of the council sites. One site plans to patch during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance process. Another site commented that they were not worried about this item since the RealPlayer software auto-updates. A few other sites notified their system support staff of the issue, but do not plan any further action.
Description: Mozilla and Firefox browsers contain multiple vulnerabilities that may be exploited by a malicious webpage to execute arbitrary code on a client system. A proof-of-concept exploit was posted last week that combines Mozilla's insufficient validation of dragging "javascript" URLs and access to restricted URLs like "about:config" via plug-in flaws to execute arbitrary code. Successful exploitation requires user interaction i.e., the user needs to drag the scrollbar twice while viewing the attacker's webpage. A heap corruption vulnerability, in Mozilla and Firefox browsers, that can be possibly exploited to execute arbitrary code has also been reported. This problem occurs because the return value of certain string functions is not properly checked. However, in order to exploit this flaw, a malicious web server would need to send a large amount of data to the client browser.
Status: Vendor confirmed. Upgrade to Firefox 1.0.1 and Mozilla 1.7.6. The updates fix a number of other issues.
Council Site Actions: Most of the council sites either do not use Firefox and Mozilla or do not support it in an official manner. Thus, they are not taking any action. One site does plan to distribute patches during their next regularly scheduled system update process. A few other sites have notified either their system support staff or the small number of users who use the applications. However, no further action is planned.
Description: Cisco Application and Content Networking Software (ACNS) runs on Cisco devices like Content Engines, Content Routers and Content Distribution Manager, and provides support for web caching. This software contains multiple denial of service vulnerabilities that may be triggered by specially crafted packets. In addition, the software has a default administrative password if the ACNS set up has not been run. A remote attacker can take a complete control of the device running ACNS software using the default password. The technical details about the DoS flaws are not available at this time.
Status: Cisco confirmed, fixes available. A workaround is to manually change the administrator password on devices running ACNS by issuing "username admin password <password>" command.
Council Site Actions: Only two of the reporting council sites are using the affected software. One site has already implemented the fix for this issue, and the second site plans to address the issue in their next regularly schedule system update process.
Description: TWiki, a Perl-based CGI software, allows multiple users to manage a web site's content through a web browser. TWiki is popularly used for intranet content management by many companies. The software's "imagegalleryplugin" contains a remote command injection vulnerability. The flaw can be reportedly exploited by any attacker, who can create or edit topics with image galleries, to execute arbitrary commands on the TWiki server. In addition, an unofficial patch has been released that claims to fix all command injection vulnerabilities. According to the discoverer's posting, there may be yet undisclosed vulnerabilities in TWiki, which are fixed via this patch.
Status: TWiki has not confirmed.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or widespread use, or is not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary. One site did send notification to their system support group.
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 4086 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
(c) 2005. 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.
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