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__________________________________________________________
The U.S. Department of Energy
Computer Incident Advisory Capability
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INFORMATION BULLETIN
Solaris 2.x fdformat Buffer Overflow Vulnerability
March 24, 1997 18:00 GMT Number H-44
______________________________________________________________________________
PROBLEM: A vulnerability exists in fdformat (1).
PLATFORM: All platforms running Solaris 2.4, 2.5, 2.5.1. Earlier versions
may also be vulnerable.
DAMAGE: This vulnerability may allow local users to gain root
privileges.
SOLUTION: Until patches are available, take the steps outlined in Section
3 as soon as possible.
______________________________________________________________________________
VULNERABILITY Exploit details involving this vulnerability have been made
ASSESSMENT: publicly available.
______________________________________________________________________________
[ Start AUSCERT Advisory ]
===========================================================================
AA-97.11 AUSCERT Advisory
Solaris 2.x fdformat Buffer Overflow Vulnerability
24 March 1997
Last Revised:
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUSCERT has received information that a vulnerability exists in
fdformat(1), distributed under Solaris 2.4, 2.5 and 2.5.1. Earlier versions
may be vulnerable.
This vulnerability may allow local users to gain root privileges.
Exploit information involving this vulnerability has been made publicly
available.
At this stage, AUSCERT is unaware of any official vendor patches. AUSCERT
recommends that sites apply the workaround given in Section 3 until vendor
patches are made available.
This advisory will be updated as more information becomes available.
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Description
fdformat(1) is a utility for formatting both diskettes and PCMCIA
memory cards.
Due to insufficient bounds checking on arguments which are supplied
by users, it is possible to overwrite the internal stack space of the
fdformat program while it is executing. By supplying a carefully
designed argument to the fdformat program, intruders may be able to
force fdformat to execute arbitrary commands. As fdformat is setuid
root, this may allow intruders to run arbitrary commands with root
privileges.
Sites can determine if this program is installed by using:
% ls -l /usr/bin/fdformat
fdformat is installed by default in /usr/bin. Sites are encouraged
to check for the presence of this program regardless of the version
of Solaris installed.
Exploit information involving this vulnerability has been made publicly
available.
Sun Microsystems has informed AUSCERT that they are currently working
on this vulnerability.
2. Impact
Local users may gain root privileges.
3. Workarounds/Solution
AUSCERT recommends that sites prevent the exploitation of this
vulnerability in fdformat by immediately applying the workaround given
in Section 3.1.
Currently there are no vendor patches available that address this
vulnerability. AUSCERT recommends that official vendor patches be
installed when they are made available.
3.1 Remove setuid execute permissions
To prevent the exploitation of the vulnerability described in this
advisory, AUSCERT recommends that the setuid permissions be removed
from the fdformat program immediately.
# ls -l /usr/bin/fdformat
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root bin 26284 Oct 25 1995 /usr/bin/fdformat
# chmod 555 /usr/bin/fdformat
# ls -l /usr/bin/fdformat
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 26284 Oct 25 1995 /usr/bin/fdformat
4. Additional measures
Most Unix systems ship with numerous programs which have setuid or
setgid privileges. Often the functionality supplied by these
privileged programs is not required by many sites. The large number
of privileged programs that are shipped by default are to cater for
all possible uses of the system.
AUSCERT encourages sites to examine all the setuid/setgid programs
and determine the necessity of each program. If a program does not
absolutely require the setuid/setgid privileges to operate (for
example, it is only run by the root user), the setuid/setgid
privileges should be removed. Furthermore, if a program is not
required at your site, then all execute permissions should be removed.
A sample command to find all setuid/setgid programs is (run as root):
# find / \( -perm -4000 -o -perm -2000 \) -type f -exec ls -l {} \;
It is AUSCERT's experience that many vulnerability are being discovered
in setuid/setgid programs which are not necessary for the correct
operation of most systems. Sites can increase their security by
removing unnecessary setuid/setgid programs.
For example, the functionality provided by the fdformat program is
not needed by many sites. If sites had previously disabled this
program, they would not have been susceptible to this latest
vulnerability.
[ End AUSCERT Advisory ]
______________________________________________________________________________
CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of AUSCERT & Sun Microsystems 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: +1 510-422-8193
FAX: +1 510-423-8002
STU-III: +1 510-423-2604
E-mail: ciac@llnl.gov
For emergencies and off-hour assistance, DOE, DOE contractor sites,
and the NIH may contact CIAC 24-hours a day. During off hours (5PM -
8AM PST), call the CIAC voice number 510-422-8193 and leave a message,
or call 800-759-7243 (800-SKY-PAGE) to send a Sky Page. CIAC has two
Sky Page PIN numbers, the primary PIN number, 8550070, is for the CIAC
duty person, and the secondary PIN number, 8550074 is for the CIAC
Project Leader.
Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are
available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive.
World Wide Web: http://ciac.llnl.gov/
Anonymous FTP: ciac.llnl.gov (128.115.19.53)
Modem access: +1 (510) 423-4753 (28.8K baud)
+1 (510) 423-3331 (28.8K baud)
CIAC has several self-subscribing mailing lists for electronic
publications:
1. CIAC-BULLETIN for Advisories, highest priority - time critical
information and Bulletins, important computer security information;
2. CIAC-NOTES for Notes, a collection of computer security articles;
3. SPI-ANNOUNCE for official news about Security Profile Inspector
(SPI) software updates, new features, distribution and
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Our mailing lists are managed by a public domain software package
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subscribe (add yourself) to one of our mailing lists, send the
following request as the E-mail message body, substituting
CIAC-BULLETIN, CIAC-NOTES, SPI-ANNOUNCE or SPI-NOTES for list-name and
valid information for LastName FirstName and PhoneNumber when sending
E-mail to ciac-listproc@llnl.gov:
subscribe list-name LastName, FirstName PhoneNumber
e.g., subscribe ciac-notes OHara, Scarlett W. 404-555-1212 x36
You will receive an acknowledgment containing address, initial PIN,
and information on how to change either of them, cancel your
subscription, or get help.
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
disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately
owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products,
process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or
otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement,
recommendation or favoring by the United States Government or the
University of California. The views and opinions of authors expressed
herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States
Government or the University of California, and shall not be used for
advertising or product endorsement purposes.
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