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The U.S. Department of Energy
Computer Incident Advisory Capability
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INFORMATION BULLETIN
Apache 1.3.27 HTTP Server Release
October 7, 2002 20:00 GMT Number N-005
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PROBLEM: The release of Apache 1.3.27 addresses and fixes three security
vulnerabilites:
1) A vulnerability exists in all versions of Apache prior to
1.3.27 on platforms using System V shared memory based
scoreboards.
2) Apache was susceptible to a cross site scripting vulnerability
in the default 404 page of any web server.
3) There were some possible overflows in ab.c.
PLATFORM: Unix OS variants.
DAMAGE: 1) The System V shared memory based scoreboards vulnerability
allows an attacker who can execute under the Apache UID to
exploit the Apache shared memory scoreboard format and send a
signal to any process as root or cause a denial of service
attack.
2) The cross site scripting vulnerability in the default 404 page
of any web server hosted on a domain will allow wildcard DNS
lookups.
3) The possible overflows in ab.c could be exploited by a malicious
server. Although this vulnerability is not in Apache itself,
it is one of the support programs bundled with Apache.
SOLUTION: Apache strongly recommends users of older versions, especially
of the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family upgrade as soon as possible to
1.3.27.
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VULNERABILITY The risk is HIGH. The most serious vulnerability allows
ASSESSMENT: execution of code to a process by a malicious attacker and
attain root access.
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LINKS:
CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/n-005.shtml
ORIGINAL BULLETIN: http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement.html
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[****** Start of Apache Bulletin ******]
Apache 1.3.27 Released
The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Server Project are
pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.27 of the Apache HTTP
Server. This Announcement notes the significant changes in 1.3.27
as compared to 1.3.26.
This version of Apache is principally a security and bug fix release.
A summary of the bug fixes is given at the end of this document.
Of particular note is that 1.3.27 addresses and fixes 3 security
vulnerabilities.
CAN-2002-0839 (cve.mitre.org)[1]: A vulnerability exists in all versions
of Apache prior to 1.3.27 on platforms using System V shared memory based
scoreboards. This vulnerability allows an attacker who can execute under
the Apache UID to exploit the Apache shared memory scoreboard format and
send a signal to any process as root or cause a local denial of service
attack. We thank iDefense for their responsible notification and
disclosure of this issue.
CAN-2002-0840 (cve.mitre.org)[2]: Apache is susceptible to a cross site
scripting vulnerability in the default 404 page of any web server hosted
on a domain that allows wildcard DNS lookups. We thank Matthew Murphy
for notification of this issue.
CAN-2002-0843 (cve.mitre.org)[3]: There were some possible overflows
in ab.c which could be exploited by a malicious server. Note that this
vulnerability is not in Apache itself, but rather one of the support
programs bundled with Apache. We thank David Wagner for the responsible
notification and disclosure of this issue.
We consider Apache 1.3.27 to be the best version of Apache 1.3 available
and we strongly recommend that users of older versions, especially of
the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible. No further
releases will be made in the 1.2.x family.
Apache 1.3.27 is available for download from
http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/
Please see the CHANGES_1.3 file in the same directory for a full list
of changes.
Binary distributions are available from
http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/
The source and binary distributions are also available via any of the
mirrors listed at
http://www.apache.org/mirrors/
As of Apache 1.3.12 binary distributions contain all standard Apache
modules as shared objects (if supported by the platform) and include
full source code. Installation is easily done by executing the
included install script. See the README.bindist and INSTALL.bindist
files for a complete explanation. Please note that the binary
distributions are only provided for your convenience and current
distributions for specific platforms are not always available. Win32
binary distributions are based on the Microsoft Installer (.MSI)
technology. While development continues to make this installation method
more robust, questions should be directed to the
news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows newsgroup.
For an overview of new features introduced after 1.2 please see
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/new_features_1_3.html
In general, Apache 1.3 offers several substantial improvements over
version 1.2, including better performance, reliability and a wider
range of supported platforms, including Windows NT and 2000 (which
fall under the "Win32" label), OS2, Netware, and TPE threaded
platforms.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR APACHE USERS: Apache 1.3 was designed for Unix OS
variants. While the ports to non-Unix platforms (such as Win32, Netware
or OS2) are of an acceptable quality, Apache 1.3 is not optimized for
these platforms. Security, stability, or performance issues on these
non-Unix ports do not generally apply to the Unix version, due to
software's Unix origin.
Apache 2.0 has been structured for multiple operating systems from its
inception, by introducing the Apache Portability Library and MPM modules.
Users on non-Unix platforms are strongly encouraged to move up to
Apache 2.0 for better performance, stability and security on their
platforms.
Apache is the most popular web server in the known universe; over half
of the servers on the Internet are running Apache or one of its
variants.
Apache 1.3.27 Major changes
Security vulnerabilities
* Fix the security vulnerability noted in CAN-2002-0839 (cve.mitre.org)
regarding ownership permissions of System V shared memory based
scoreboards. The fix resulted in the new ShmemUIDisUser directive.
* Fix the security vulnerability noted in CAN-2002-0840 (cvs.mitre.org)
regarding a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the default error
page when using wildcard DNS.
* Fix the security vulnerability noted in CAN-2002-0843 (cve.mitre.org)
regarding some possible overflows in ab.c which could be exploited by
a malicious server.
New features
The main new features in 1.3.27 (compared to 1.3.26) are:
* The new ErrorHeader directive has been added.
* Configuration file globbing can now use simple pattern
matching.
* The protocol version (eg: HTTP/1.1) in the request line parsing
is now case insensitive.
* ap_snprintf() can now distinguish between an output which was
truncated, and an output which exactly filled the buffer.
* Add ProtocolReqCheck directive, which determines if Apache will
check for a valid protocol string in the request (eg: HTTP/1.1)
and return HTTP_BAD_REQUEST if not valid. Versions of Apache
prior to 1.3.26 would silently ignore bad protocol strings, but
1.3.26 included a more strict check. This makes it runtime
configurable.
* Added support for Berkeley-DB/4.x to mod_auth_db.
* httpd -V will now also print out the compile time defined
HARD_SERVER_LIMIT value.
New features that relate to specific platforms:
* Support Caldera OpenUNIX 8.
* Use SysV semaphores by default on OpenBSD.
* Implemented file locking in mod_rewrite for the NetWare
CLib platform.
Bugs fixed
The following bugs were found in Apache 1.3.26 (or earlier) and have
been fixed in Apache 1.3.27:
* mod_proxy fixes:
- The cache in mod_proxy was incorrectly updating the Content-Length
value from 304 responses when doing validation.
- Fix a problem in proxy where headers from other modules were
added to the response headers when this was already done in the
core already.
* In 1.3.26, a null or all blank Content-Length field would be
triggered as an error; previous versions would silently ignore
this and assume 0. 1.3.27 restores this previous behavior.
* Win32: Fix one byte buffer overflow in ap_get_win32_interpreter
when a CGI script's #! line does not contain a \r or \n (i.e.
a line feed character) in the first 1023 bytes. The overflow
is always a '\0' (string termination) character.
References
[1] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2002-0839
[2] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2002-0840
[3] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2002-0843
[****** End of Apache Bulletin ******]
_______________________________________________________________________________
CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of The Apache Software Foundation
for the information contained in this bulletin.
_______________________________________________________________________________
CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, is the computer
security incident response team for the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) and the emergency backup response team for the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). CIAC is located at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in Livermore, California. CIAC is also a founding
member of FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, a
global organization established to foster cooperation and coordination
among computer security teams worldwide.
CIAC services are available to DOE, DOE contractors, and the NIH. CIAC
can be contacted at:
Voice: +1 925-422-8193 (7x24)
FAX: +1 925-423-8002
STU-III: +1 925-423-2604
E-mail: ciac@ciac.org
Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are
available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive.
World Wide Web: http://www.ciac.org/
Anonymous FTP: ftp.ciac.org
PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE, ESnet, and NIH computing
communities receive CIAC bulletins. If you are not part of these
communities, please contact your agency's response team to report
incidents. Your agency's team will coordinate with CIAC. The Forum of
Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is a world-wide
organization. A list of FIRST member organizations and their
constituencies can be obtained via WWW at http://www.first.org/.
This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an
agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States
Government nor the University of California nor any of their
employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any
legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or
usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process
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Government or the University of California, and shall not be used for
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