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__________________________________________________________
The U.S. Department of Energy
Computer Incident Advisory Capability
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__________________________________________________________
INFORMATION BULLETIN
OSF/DCE Security Hole
July 31, 1995 0900 PDT Number F-26
_______________________________________________________________________________
PROBLEM: OSF/DCE security has a flawed aliasing mechanism in its
registry that can potentially yield a less secure DCE cell.
PLATFORM: OSF/DCE
DAMAGE: Partially privileged administrators are able to gain full
privileges.
SOLUTION: Provide privileges to administrators with caution until
a fix is available from OSF.
AVAILABILITY: Contact the Open Software Foundation (see below).
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VULNERABILITY Sites that make heavy use of granting administration rights
ASSESSMENT: should strongly consider reviewing their registry, and
installing patches when available from the OSF.
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CRITICAL Information for OSF/DCE Security Registry
CIAC has obtained information from the Open Software Foundation,
describing a vulnerability in their OSF/DCE software. Specific details
of the vulnerability are provided in the included OSF security
advisory.
[BEGINNING OF OSF SECURITY ADVISORY]
Advisory on OSF/DCE Security Hole
July 19, 1995
It has been discovered that OSF/DCE security has a flawed aliasing
mechanism in its registry that can potentially yield a less secure
DCE cell.
PROBLEM:
Multiple administrators in a DCE cell (i.e., principals with the
privileges required to create principals and accounts within the DCE
registry), some of which are intended to be less trusted than the
cell administrator (e.g., principals intended to be restricted to
create principals and accounts only within a subset of DCE registry
name space), cannot be prevented from acquiring full privileges of
the cell administrator. Due to a flaw in the DCE security registry
such less privileged administrators are able to gain full privileges
by creating an alias to the cell administrator. The security server
grants an alias principal full rights of the principal it is aliased
to.
DCE security registry principals are generally not allowed to create
accounts. Only an account designated as some type of administrator,
by explicitly creating ACL entries for that principal, allows it to
do things to the registry that normal users are not allowed to do,
that is, create principals and accounts in a certain part of the
security name space. In OSF/DCE as it ships, only cell_admin is
given such privileges. To that effect, the DCE cell administrator can
prevent any loss of security by following the guidelines described
below.
HOW TO AVOID:
This security hole has existed in all releases of OSF/DCE todate.
To avoid the problem in releases prior to OSF/DCE 1.1, the DCE cell
administrators should not explicitly give registry administration
rights to principals that would not otherwise have access to the
cell administrator account itself. As distributed by OSF, only
cell_admin is given such rights.
OSF is in the process of providing a fix for this defect to DCE 1.1
support licensees for them to apply to their DCE 1.1 based products.
The end-users may ask their DCE vendors for such a fix. All future
releases of OSF/DCE will have this fix incorporated.
**********************************************************************
OSF Systems Engineering
Open Software Foundation
11 Cambridge Center,
Cambridge, MA 02142
Telephone: +1 617 621 8990
E-mail: dce-support-admin@osf.org
[END OF OSF SECURITY ADVISORY]
_______________________________________________________________________________
CIAC wishes to thank OSF for the information provided in this
bulletin.
_____________________________________________________________________________
CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, is the computer security
incident response team for the U.S. Department of Energy. 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 and DOE contractors, and CIAC can be
contacted at:
Voice: 510-422-8193
FAX: 510-423-8002
STU-III: 510-423-2604
E-mail: ciac@llnl.gov
For emergencies and off-hour assistance, DOE and DOE contractor sites 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: (510) 423-4753 (14.4K baud)
(510) 423-3331 (9600 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 availability;
4. SPI-NOTES, for discussion of problems and solutions regarding the use of
SPI products.
Our mailing lists are managed by a public domain software package called
ListProcessor, which ignores E-mail header subject lines. To 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 OUHara, 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 and ESnet 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 by sending email to docserver@first.org
with an empty subject line and a message body containing the line: send
first-contacts.
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.
CIAC BULLETINS ISSUED IN FY95 (Previous bulletins available from CIAC)
(F-01) SGI IRIX serial_ports Vulnerability
(F-02) Summary of HP Security Bulletins
(F-03) Restricted Distribution
(F-04) Security Vulnerabilities in DECnet/OSI for OpenVMS
(F-05) SCO Unix at, login, prwarn, sadc, and pt_chmod
Patches Available
(F-06) Novell UnixWare sadc, urestore, and suid_exec Vulnerabilities
(F-07) New and Revised HP Bulletins
(F-08) Internet Address Spoofing and Hijacked Session Attacks
(F-09) Unix /bin/mail Vulnerabilities
(F-10) HP-UX Remote Watch
(F-11) Unix NCSA httpd Vulnerability
(F-12) Kerberos Telnet Encryption Vulnerability
(F-13) Unix sendmail vulnerabilities
(F-14) HP-UX Malicious Code Sequences
(F-15) HP-UX "at" and "cron" vulnerabilities
(F-16) SGI IRIX Desktop Permissions Tool Vulnerability
(F-17) Limited Distribution
(F-18) MPE/iX Vulnerabilities
(F-19) Protecting HP-UX Systems Against SATAN
(F-20) Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (SATAN)
(F-21) Protecting SUN OS Systems Against SATAN
(F-22) SATAN Password Disclosure
(F-23) Protecting IBM AIX Systems Against SATAN
(F-24) Protecting SGI IRIX Systems Against SATAN
(F-25) Cisco IOS Router Software Vulnerability
CIAC NOTES ISSUED IN FY1995 (Previous Notes available from CIAC)
04c December 8, 1994
05d January 11, 1995
06 March 22, 1995
07 March 29, 1995
08 April 4, 1995
09 April 24, 1995
10a June 16, 1995
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