The below was published on mod_survey's mailing list a few minutes ago. 

More info about Mod_Survey can be found on its home page, which is                                                                                                                
available at http://gathering.itm.mh.se/modsurvey/                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                                                  
  // Joel


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Mod_Survey Security Advisory 2003-05-04, SYSBASE flood
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ABOUT MOD_SURVEY
----------------
Mod_Survey is an Apache module which displays and handles questionnaires
written in a special XML-based markup language. Mod_Survey is primarily
targeted towards Linux/Unix, but is also possible to run in Windows.


SUMMARY
-------
In all versions prior to 3.0.15-stable, it is possible for a remote evil 
person to fill the partition on which the central data repository 
resides, through sending access requests to non-existing surveys. 


ERROR CATEGORY
--------------
The error falls into the classes "Input Validation Error" and 
"Denial of Service". It is possible to exploit remotely.


VULNERABLE
----------
All versions from 3.0.0 up to (but not including) 3.0.15-stable are 
vulnerable. Thus the following versions have the problem:

  3.0.0
  3.0.1
  3.0.2
  3.0.3
  3.0.4
  3.0.5
  3.0.6
  3.0.7
  3.0.8
  3.0.9
  3.0.10
  3.0.11
  3.0.12
  3.0.13
  3.0.14
  3.0.14d
  3.0.14e

  3.0.15-pre1
  3.0.15-pre2
  3.0.15-pre3
  3.0.15-pre4
  3.0.15-pre5
  3.0.15-pre6

Not vulnerable:

  3.0.15-stable


SOLUTION
--------
All users are encouraged to upgrade to version 3.0.15-stable. However, 
if you are running 3.0.14 - 3.0.14e and do not wish to upgrade at this 
time, you could also download the "Document.pm" module from the 
mod_survey homepage (http://gathering.itm.mh.se/modsurvey/) and use it 
to replace the faulty one in the "Survey" subdir of the installation 
folder. This is not an option if you run versions prior to 3.0.14. 

Apache needs to be stopped (to a full stop, not "graceful") and then
started again before changes in these modules take effect.


LONGER DISCUSSION
-----------------
Mod_survey does per default store all data files, such as cache, keys
and submitted questionnaire answers, in a data repository, "SYSBASE".
In practise this repository is a subdir of the central data repository.

SYSBASE is created when the survey file is first accessed, and is given 
the full path of the survey as name (with slashes converted to 
underscores). 

Unfortunately, the check whether the survey file actually exists did
not take place until *after* the repository was initialized. Thus, an 
empty SYSBASE would be set up even if the access concerned a 
non-existent survey file. 

In normal operation, this might look rather sloppy, but would not a be 
problem, since the occasional mistyped path would only result in an 
additional empty directory. However, while the directory is "empty" in 
the sense that it does not contain any data from the beginning, it still
occupies space in the file system. A script with a loop that produces 
access requests to new non-existent surveys several times per second 
would pretty soon fill the partition.

The consequences of this differ depending on which platform the system
is installed, and which partition contains the data repository. The usual
consequence would simply be that no data could be written to the 
partition, thus stopping further data collection. However, in theory, 
a filled partition could down a system. An example would be on a unixoid
system where the data repository resided somewhere in /var (the default
location is in /usr/local/mod_survey/data). 


EXPLOIT
-------
An exploit exists and is shown to be functional, but has to our knowledge
not reached the public. However, given the nature of the problem, anyone 
with a minimum of knowledge of any scripting language could easily
reproduce the exploit from the above information.


IMPACT
------
All current installations of mod_survey are vulnerable and could thus at 
least be attacked with a DoS attack exploiting the above.

It is conceivable that the problem could also be used to attack bugs in
the file system itself, as an example through injecting control chars
that the operating system cannot handle, although no exploit for this has 
yet been proposed. An upgrade to 3.0.15-stable removes the theoretical 
possibility for this problem too though.


CREDITS
-------
The problem was first discovered and discussed by Jesse Adelman of the 
University of California, San Francisco.