This is a week for security flaws in security vendors' software: McaFee, Symantec, Computer Associates and TrendMicro. If you thought you were seeing an increasing number of flaws in security vendor's products, you are correct. The flaws may have always been there, but the trend attacker community has targeted these products because they (and back-up products) are so often trusted and so rarely updated. They provide fertile territory for circumventing firewalls.
One of the more interesting elements of this issue is the Xerox vulnerability and the lack of any way to fix them. Printers, especially dual-homed printers are one of the most effective attack vectors for penetrating sensitive areas of companies. Most printers with network interface cards have multiple vulnerabilities, but most sited don't even try to patch them.
@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 Rob King and Rohit Dhamankar 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 web server component used in both McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (used to monitor and maintain enterprise policy) and McAfee Protection Pilot (used to monitor and maintain threat protection software) contains an exploitable buffer overflow. By sending a specially-crafted request to this server component, an attacker could trigger this buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the process - often SYSTEM. Note that multiple working exploits have been publicly posted for these vulnerabilities. Users are advised to block access to port 81/TCP at the network perimeter, if possible.
Status: McAfee confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the responding council sites is using the affected software and they plan to deploy the patch during their next regularly scheduled system maintenance cycle. Technical Explanation by BackTrack http://www.remote-exploit.org/advisories/mcafee-epo.pdf Proofs-of-Concept http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/2467 http://downloads.securityfocus.com/vulnerabilities/exploits/20228.py McAfee Home Page http://www.mcafee.com/ SecurityFocus BID http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/20288
Description: Several Computer Associates products suffer from multiple vulnerabilities: (1) An exploitable heap overflow exists in the Message Engine RPC service. (2) An exploitable stack-based buffer overflow exists in the Discovery Service, running on ports 41524/UDP and 41523/TCP. By exploiting either or both of these vulnerabilities, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the vulnerable process - often SYSTEM. No authentication is required to exploit either of these vulnerabilities. Some technical details for both of these vulnerabilities have been publicly posted.
Status: Computer Associates confirmed, updates available.
Description: The Symantec Automated Support Tool ActiveX control, used by multiple Symantec products to provide diagnostic information for problem resolution, contains an exploitable buffer overflow. A specially crafted web page that instantiates this control could exploit this buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that re-usable exploit code to leverage these flaws is publicly available. Flaws similar to these have been widely exploited in the past.
Status: Symantec confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Two of the responding council sites are using the affected software. The first site is already in the process of patching their systems. The second site has a few hundred installations, but on systems that are not supported by their central IT department. They have no immediate plans to respond because they have no realistic way to identify the affected user population.
Description: MailEnable, a popular email solution for Microsoft Windows, contains several exploitable vulnerabilities in its handling of authentication requests. By sending specially-crafted NTLM (NT Login Manager) authentication requests to the SMTP server, an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the server process - often SYSTEM. Currently, it is believed that authentication is not required to exploit this vulnerability. NTLM authentication is disabled by default in MailEnable.
Status: MailEnable confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: affected software and/or configuration are not in production or widespread use, or are not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary. Mu Security Advisory http://labs.musecurity.com/advisories/MU-200609-01.txt MailEnable Home Page http://www.mailenable.com SecurityFocus BID http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/20290
Description: Tend Micro OfficeScan Corporate Edition, a popular antivirus and anti-spyware suite, contains an exploitable format string vulnerability. By sending a specially-crafted string to the Remote Client Install search function of the ActiveX component, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability and potentially execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the OfficeScan process. Note that some technical details for this vulnerability have been publicly posted.
Status: Trend Micro, confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: affected software and/or configuration are not in production or widespread use, or are not officially supported at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary. Layered Defense Security Advisory http://www.layereddefense.com/TREND01OCT.html Trend Micro Home Page http://www.trendmicro.com SecurityFocus BID http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/20284
Description: phpBB, a popular PHP-based bulletin board system, contains an remote code execution vulnerability. By sending a specially-formatted value to the phpBB instance via the "Avatar_Path" variable, an attacker could execute arbitrary PHP code with the privileges of the web server process. Becuase phpBB is open source, technical details of this vulnerability are easily available via source code analysis.
Status: phpBB has not confirmed, no updates available.
Description: Xerox WorkCentre and WorkCentre Pro multi-function copier/printers contain an exploitable authentication-bypass vulnerability. By sending a specially-crafted request to the administration web interface, an attacker could bypass the configured authentication systems and potentially gain complete control of the vulnerable system.
Status: Xerox confirmed, updates available.
Council Site Actions: Only one of the responding council sites is using the affected software/models. They sent the vulnerability information to their printer support group. They have a dozen or so Xerox systems, but they do not have accurate information about device ownership or location. They considered passing along the information by e-mail to departmental system administrators, but this is of limited value because many departments do not consider the device to be computing equipment, and the person who maintains the device does not maintain any (other)computer systems.
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 5181 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
(c) 2006. 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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