__________________________________________________________

                       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
______________________________________________________________________________
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. 
______________________________________________________________________________
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. 
______________________________________________________________________________
LINKS: 
 CIAC BULLETIN:      http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/n-005.shtml 
 ORIGINAL BULLETIN:  http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement.html 
______________________________________________________________________________

[******  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
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