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-
- =============================================================================
- CERT* Advisory CA-97.23
- Original issue date: September 16, 1997
-
- Last revised: September 19, 1997
- Appendix A - Added information for OpenBSD and
- Silicon Graphics, Inc.
-
- A complete revision history is at the end of this file.
-
- Topic: Buffer Overflow Problem in rdist
- - -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- The CERT Coordination Center has received reports of a vulnerability in rdist
- that enables anyone with access to a local account to gain root privileges.
- This is not the same vulnerability as the one discussed in CA-96.14.
-
- Section III.A contains instructions on how to determine if your site is
- vulnerable. If your implementation of rdist is vulnerable, the CERT/CC team
- encourages you to follow your vendor's instructions (Sec. III.B and Appendix
- A) or install a freely available version of the rdist program that is not
- installed as set-user-id root and is, therefore, not susceptible to the
- exploitation described in this advisory (Sec. III.C).
-
- For information on the earlier problem with rdist, see
- ftp://info.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-96.14.rdist_vul
-
- We will update this advisory as we receive additional information.
- Please check our advisory files regularly for updates that relate to your
- site.
-
- - -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- I. Description
-
- The rdist program is a UNIX Operating System utility used to
- distribute files from one host to another. On some systems, rdist
- opens network connections using a privileged port as the source port.
- This requires root privileges, and to attain these privileges rdist on
- such systems is installed set-user-id root.
-
- A new vulnerability has been found in some set-user-id root
- implementations of rdist. The vulnerability lies in the function
- expstr(), where macros supplied as arguments are expanded using
- sprintf(). It is possible to overwrite stack frames and call specially
- pre-crafted native machine code. If the appropriate machine code is
- supplied, an attacker can execute arbitrary programs (such as the
- shell) with set-user-id root privileges.
-
- Note that this vulnerability is distinct from that discussed in CERT
- advisory CA-96.14.
-
-
- II. Impact
-
- On systems with a vulnerable copy of rdist, anyone with access to a
- local account can gain root access.
-
-
- III. Solution
-
- We urge you to follow the steps in Section A to determine if your
- system is vulnerable and, if it is, to turn off rdist while you decide
- how to proceed.
-
- If your system is vulnerable and you need the functionality that rdist
- provides, you should install a vendor patch (Section B). Until you can
- do so, you may want to use a freely available version of rdist that
- does not need to be installed as set-user-id root and is, therefore,
- not susceptible to the exploitation described in this advisory
- (Section C).
-
- A. How to check for set-user-id root versions of rdist
-
- To find set-user-id root versions of rdist and to disable the
- programs that are possibly vulnerable, use the following find
- command or a variant. Consult your local system documentation to
- determine how to tailor the find program on your system.
-
- You will need to run the find command on each system you maintain
- because the command examines files on the local disk only.
- Substitute the names of your local file systems for
- FILE_SYSTEM_NAMES in the example. Example local file system names
- are /, /usr, and /var. You must do this as root.
-
- Note that this is one long command, though we have separated
- it onto three lines using backslashes.
-
- find FILE_SYSTEM_NAMES -xdev -type f -user root \
- -name '*rdist*' -perm -04000 -exec ls -l '{}' \; \
- -ok chmod 0500 '{}' \;
-
- This command will find all files on a system that
- - are only in the file system you name (FILE_SYSTEM_NAMES -xdev)
- - are regular files (-type f)
- - are owned by root (-user root)
- - have "rdist" as a component of the name (-name '*rdist*')
- - are setuid (-perm -04000)
-
- Once found, those files will
- - have their names and details printed (-exec ls -l '{}')
- - have the setuid mode removed (making the file available
- only to root) but only if you type `y' in response to the
- prompt (-ok chmod 0500 '{}' \;)
-
- B. Obtain and install the appropriate patch
-
- Below is a list of vendors who have provided information for this
- advisory. Details are in Appendix A, and we will update the appendix
- as we receive more information.
-
- Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI)
- Digital Equipment Corp.
- FreeBSD, Inc.
- Hewlett-Packard Company
- IBM Corporation
- NEC Corporation
- The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (SCO)
- Siemens-Nixdorf
- Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI)
- Sun Microsystems, Inc.
-
- If your vendor's name is not on this list, please contact the
- vendor directly.
-
- C. If you need the functionality that rdist provides but a patched
- version is not yet available from your vendor, consider installing
- rdist-6.1.3, which is freely available from
-
- ftp://usc.edu/pub/rdist/rdist-6.1.3.tar.gz
-
- MD5 (rdist-6.1.3.tar.gz) = 8a76b880b023c5e648b7cb77b9608b9f
-
- The README file in the distribution explains how to configure and
- install this version of rdist.
-
- We recommend that you configure this version of rdist to use rsh
- instead of rcmd. Here is the relevant text from the README:
-
- By default rdist uses rsh(1c) to make connections to remote
- hosts. This has the advantage that rdist does not need to be
- setuid to "root". This eliminates most potential security
- holes. It has the disadvantage that it takes slightly more time
- for rdist to connect to a remote host due to the added overhead
- of doing a fork() and then running the rsh(1c) command.
-
- Some sites with sufficient expertise use the ssh program in
- conjunction with rdist, instead of using rcmd or rsh. If you have
- the expertise, you may want to implement this configuration.
-
- For further details on this option see "Ssh (Secure Shell) FAQ -
- Frequently asked questions," Section 4.4, "Can I use rdist with ssh?"
- It is available from
-
- http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~ig25/ssh-faq/ssh-faq-4.html
-
- For details on how to obtain ssh, see FAQ Section 3.4, "Where can I
- obtain ssh?" This section can be found in
-
- http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/~ig25/ssh-faq/ssh-faq-3.html
-
-
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
- Appendix A - Vendor Information
-
- Below is a list of the vendors who have provided information for this
- advisory. We will update this appendix as we receive additional information.
- If you do not see your vendor's name, the CERT/CC did not hear from that
- vendor. Please contact the vendor directly.
-
-
- Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI)
- =====================================
- BSDI shipped a patch for this for our 2.1 release (U210-018) when
- the original Bugtraq advisory was released. The 3.0 version of
- rdist is not vulnerable and in fact is no longer even setuid.
-
-
- Digital Equipment Corp.
- =======================
- This reported problem is not present for Digital's ULTRIX or Digital UNIX
- Operating Systems Software.
-
- DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION
- -----------------------------
-
- FreeBSD, Inc.
- =============
- 2.1.0 is vulnerable.
- 2.1.5, 2.1.6 and 2.1.7 are and 2.1-stable are not. In any case, upgrading
- to 2.1.7 or even better, 2.1-stable should be considered.
- If there is demand, we'll release a patch for 2.1.0
-
- All 2.2 releases, 2.2-stable and FreeBSD-current are not vulnerable.
-
-
- Hewlett-Packard Company
- =======================
- HP is -not- vulnerable; the problem didn't exist in 9.X, and has been fixed
- in 10.X with Security Bulletin #36 (HPSBUX9608-036) last year. Patch
- numbers change frequently because of cumulative patching, so please check
- current patch ID information either by bulletin or by platform/release at
- our HP Electronic Support Center in the "Security Patch Matrix," which is
- updated every 24 hours.
-
- 1) From your Web browser, access the URL:
-
- http://us-support.external.hp.com (US,Canada,Asia-Pacific,
- and Latin-America)
-
- http://europe-support.external.hp.com (Europe)
-
- 2) On the HP Electronic Support Center main screen, select the
- hyperlink "Support Information Digests".
-
-
- 3) On the "Welcome to HP's Support Information Digests" screen,
- under the heading "Register Now", select the appropriate hyperlink
- "Americas and Asia-Pacific", or "Europe".
-
- 4) On the "New User Registration" screen, fill in the fields
- for the User Information and Password and then select the button
- labeled "Submit New User".
-
- 5) On the "User ID Assigned" screen, select the hyperlink
- "Support Information Digests".
-
- **Note what your assigned user ID and password are for future
- reference.
-
- 6) You should now be on the "HP Support Information Digests Main"
- screen. You might want to verify that your email address is
- correct as displayed on the screen. From this screen, you may
- also view/subscribe to the digests, including the security
- bulletins digest.
-
- To get a patch matrix of current HP-UX and BLS security
- patches referenced by either Security Bulletin or Platform/OS,
- click on following screens in order:
- Technical Knowledge Database
- Browse the HP Security Bulletins Archive
- HP-UX Security Patch Matrix
-
-
- IBM Corporation
- ===============
- All versions of AIX are vulnerable to this buffer overflow. There is
- no 3.2 fix. It is recommended that 3.2 customers upgrade to a higher
- level. The following APARs will be available for AIX version 4
- soon.
-
- AIX 3.2: upgrade to 4.1.5 or higher
- AIX 4.1: IX70876
- AIX 4.2: IX70875
-
- To Order
- --------
- APARs may be ordered using Electronic Fix Distribution (via FixDist)
- or from the IBM Support Center. For more information on FixDist,
- reference URL:
-
- http://service.software.ibm.com/aixsupport/
-
- or send e-mail to aixserv@austin.ibm.com with a subject of "FixDist".
-
- IBM and AIX are registered trademarks of International Business Machines
- Corporation.
-
-
- NEC Corporation
- ===============
- The following systems are NOT affected by this vulnerability:
-
- UX/4800
- UX/4800(64)
- EWS-UX/V(Rel4.2MP)
- EWS-UX/V(Rel4.2)
- UP-UX/V(Rel4.2MP)
-
- To report a new vulnerability, contact <UX48-security-support@nec.co.jp>.
-
- OpenBSD
- =======
-
- OpenBSD does not have this problem. None of the versions of rdist
- distributed are setuid or setgid.
-
-
- The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (SCO)
- ====================================
- SCO has determined that the following SCO operating systems are
- not vulnerable:
-
- - SCO CMW+ 3.0
- - SCO Open Desktop/Open Server 3.0
- - SCO OpenServer 5.0
- - SCO UnixWare 2.1
-
-
- Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG
- ======================================
- Siemens-Nixdorf does not ship rdist.
-
-
- Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI)
- ===========================
-
- Silicon Graphics Inc. issued Security Advisory, "IRIX ordist
- Buffer Overrun Vulnerability," 19970509-02-PX, August 5, 1997.
-
- Patches are available via anonymous FTP and your service/support provider.
-
- The SGI anonymous FTP site is sgigate.sgi.com (204.94.209.1) or its
- mirror, ftp.sgi.com. Security information and patches can be found
- in the ~ftp/security and ~ftp/patches directories, respectfully.
-
- For subscribing to the wiretap mailing list and other SGI security related
- information, please refer to the Silicon Graphics Security Headquarters
- website located at:
-
- http://www.sgi.com/Support/security/security.html
-
-
- Sun Microsystems, Inc.
- ======================
- We are producing patches.
-
- - -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- The CERT Coordination Center thanks Hiroshi Nakano of Ryukoku University,
- Japan for reporting this problem. We also thank Wolfgang Ley of DFN-CERT
- for his assistance with the Solutions section of the advisory.
-
- - -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- If you believe that your system has been compromised, contact the CERT
- Coordination Center or your representative in the Forum of Incident Response
- and Security Teams (see http://www.first.org/team-info/).
-
-
- CERT/CC Contact Information
- - ----------------------------
- Email cert@cert.org
-
- Phone +1 412-268-7090 (24-hour hotline)
- CERT personnel answer 8:30-5:00 p.m. EST(GMT-5) / EDT(GMT-4)
- and are on call for emergencies during other hours.
-
- Fax +1 412-268-6989
-
- Postal address
- CERT Coordination Center
- Software Engineering Institute
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
- USA
-
- Using encryption
- We strongly urge you to encrypt sensitive information sent by email. We can
- support a shared DES key or PGP. Contact the CERT/CC for more information.
- Location of CERT PGP key
- ftp://info.cert.org/pub/CERT_PGP.key
-
- Getting security information
- CERT publications and other security information are available from
- http://www.cert.org/
- ftp://info.cert.org/pub/
-
- CERT advisories and bulletins are also posted on the USENET newsgroup
- comp.security.announce
-
- To be added to our mailing list for advisories and bulletins, send
- email to
- cert-advisory-request@cert.org
- In the subject line, type
- SUBSCRIBE your-email-address
-
- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Copyright 1997 Carnegie Mellon University. Conditions for use, disclaimers,
- and sponsorship information can be found in
- http://www.cert.org/legal_stuff.html and ftp://info.cert.org/pub/legal_stuff .
- If you do not have FTP or web access, send mail to cert@cert.org with
- "copyright" in the subject line.
-
- *CERT is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
-
- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- This file: ftp://info.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-97.23.rdist
- http://www.cert.org
- click on "CERT Advisories"
-
-
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Revision history
-
- Sept. 15, 1997 - Appendix A - added information for OpenBSD and
- Silicon Graphics, Inc.
-
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