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             __________________________________________________________

                       The U.S. Department of Energy
                    Computer Incident Advisory Capability
                           ___  __ __    _     ___
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                          \___  __|__  /   \  \___
             __________________________________________________________

                             INFORMATION BULLETIN

             HP-UX vuefile, vuepad, dtfile, & dtpad Vulnerabilities

September 9, 1997 22:00 GMT                                       Number H-105
______________________________________________________________________________
PROBLEM:       Users can inadvertently allow access to their accounts by
               running vuefile, vuepad, dtfile, or dtpad to displays they do
               not control.
PLATFORM:      HP9000 Series 700/800s running HP-UX releases 9.X and 10.X.
DAMAGE:        May allow unauthorized users to gain root privileges.
SOLUTION:      Inform users they should never run vuefile, vuepad, dtfile, or
               dtpad while su'd to another account. They also should never run
               these programs with the display directed to another Xserver
               unless they are logged into that Xserver in the same account.
______________________________________________________________________________
VULNERABILITY  The information in the following Security Advisory should be
ASSESSMENT:    acted upon as soon as possible. Hewlett Packard will not be
               liable for any consequences to any customer resulting from
               customer's failure to fully implement instructions in this
               Security Advisory as soon as possible.
______________________________________________________________________________

[ Start Hewlett-Packard Advisory ]

Document ID:  HPSBUX9709-069
Date Loaded:  970909
      Title:  Security Advisory in vuefile, vuepad, et. al. in HP-UX

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
     HEWLETT-PACKARD SECURITY ADVISORY: #00069, 08 September 1997
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------

The information in the following Security Advisory should be acted upon
as soon as possible.  Hewlett Packard will not be liable for any
consequences to any customer resulting from customer's failure to fully
implement instructions in this Security Advisory as soon as possible.

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
PROBLEM:  Users can inadvertently allow access to their accounts
          by running vuefile, vuepad, dtfile, or dtpad to displays
          they do not control.

PLATFORM: HP9000 Series 700/800s running HP-UX releases 9.X and 10.X

DAMAGE:   Users can gain privileges.

SOLUTION: Do not run vuefile, vuepad, dtfile, or dtpad while su'd to
          another account.  Also do not run them with the display set
          to another Xserver, unless the same account is logged in at
          each Xserver.

AVAILABILITY:  Not applicable
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
I.
   A. Background
      Vuefile, vuepad, dtfile, and dtpad do not authenticate users.
      Care must be taken to insure that only one user per Xserver runs
      these programs.


   B. Fixing the problem
      The current and perhaps only solution is to avoid the situation.
      This advisory will be updated if patches become available.


   C. Recommended solution
      Inform users so that they can avoid the situation.  They should
      never run vuefile, vuepad, dtfile, or dtpad while su'd to another
      account.
      They also should never run these programs with the display directed
      to another Xserver unless they are logged into that Xserver in the
      same account.

      One way to make it more difficult for a user to su and run these
      programs is to enable per user authorization.  This eliminates
      the potential for a user to run the programs on the wrong display
      by accidentally mistyping the display name.

      Per-user authorization is the default in CDE.  In Vue, it can be
      enabled in /usr/vue/config/Xconfig:

        #  To enable R4 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 per-user authorization.
        #
        Vuelogin*authorize:         True

      Note that if per-user authorization is not enabled many
      security breaches are possible.  For example, it is possible
      for a program to capture keystrokes typed on the Xserver.

      The root user can circumvent the per-user authorization and
      non-root users can give the Xauthority away.  So all users
      still must be aware not to run vuefile, vuepad, dtfile, or
      dtpad as described above.


   D. To subscribe to automatically receive future NEW HP Security
      Bulletins from the HP Electronic Support Center via electronic
      mail, do the following:

      Use your browser to get to the HP Electronic Support Center page at:

      http://us-support.external.hp.com
      (for US, Canada, Asia-Pacific, & Latin-America)

      http://europe-support.external.hp.com (for Europe)


      Click on the Technical Knowledge Database, register as a user
      (remember to save the User ID assigned to you, and your password),
      and it will connect to a HP Search Technical Knowledge DB page.
      Near the bottom is a hyperlink to our Security Bulletin archive.
      Once in the archive there is another link to our current
      security patch matrix. Updated daily, this matrix is categorized
      by platform/OS release, and by bulletin topic.


   E. To report new security vulnerabilities, send email to

          security-alert@hp.com

      Please encrypt any exploit information using the security-alert
      PGP key, available from your local key server, or by sending a
      message with a -subject- (not body) of 'get key' (no quotes) to
      security-alert@hp.com.

     Permission is granted for copying and circulating this Bulletin to
     Hewlett-Packard (HP) customers (or the Internet community) for the
     purpose of alerting them to problems, if and only if, the Bulletin is
     not edited or changed in any way, is attributed to HP, and provided
     such reproduction and/or distribution is performed for non-commercial
     purposes.

     Any other use of this information is prohibited. HP is not liable
     for any misuse of this information by any third party.
________________________________________________________________________
- -----End of Document ID:  HPSBUX9709-069--------------------------------------

[ End Hewlett-Packard Advisory ]

______________________________________________________________________________

CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Hewlett-Packard 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
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LAST 10 CIAC BULLETINS ISSUED (Previous bulletins available from CIAC)

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