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fedcirc.98.03.txt

fedcirc.98.03.txt
Posted Sep 23, 1999

fedcirc.98.03.txt

SHA-256 | 0c5a0d049be97e64ba166428793a0f1cabfa6077aaad5395e9dd327966bcc07e

fedcirc.98.03.txt

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A D V I S O R Y

FA-98.03
******************************************************************************
Topic: CGI Security Hole in EWS1.1
Source: CERT/CC

Creation Date: Jan. 16, 1998
Last Updated:

To aid in the wide distribution of essential security information, FedCIRC is
forwarding the following information from CERT/CC Vendor Initiated Bulletin
(VB-98.01). FedCIRC urges you to act on this information as soon as possible.

If you have any questions, please contact FedCIRC:

Telephone: +1 888 282 0870
Email: fedcirc@fedcirc.gov



=======================FORWARDED TEXT STARTS HERE============================

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

=============================================================================
CERT* Vendor-Initiated Bulletin VB-98.01
Jan. 16, 1998

Topic: CGI Security Hole in EWS1.1
Source: Excite, Inc.

To aid in the wide distribution of essential security information, the CERT
Coordination Center is forwarding the following information from Excite, Inc.
Excite, Inc. urges you to act on this information as soon as possible. Excite,
Inc. contact information is included in the forwarded text below; please
contact them if you have any questions or need further information.


=======================FORWARDED TEXT STARTS HERE============================

Topic: CGI Security Hole in EWS1.1

Source: Excite, Inc.

555 Broadway, Redwood City, CA 94063
http://www.excite.com

Problem: Vulnerability in EWS1.1, Unix and Windows NT platforms


I. Description


Excite for Web Servers, version 1.1, for Unix and Windows NT platforms,
contains a security hole that could allow a malicious user of the software
to execute shell commands on the the host system on which EWS has been
installed. In situations where the web server is running under a user-id
with sufficient access privileges, a hacker could conceivably cause damage
to the host system.

EWS's search CGI is implemented in Perl and invokes a binary program to
actually perform the search against the corpus. The function of the Perl
CGI is to parse the results from the search engine and render them in HTML.

This bug in no way affects Excite.com, anyone visiting or searching
Excite.com, any search boxes (for example, those on the Netscape and
Microsoft sites) that point to Excite.com, or sites that the Excite spider
indexes.


II. Impact


Because a search entered by a user into the web page is passed as command
line argument to the search binary, and because the command line is
interpreted by the shell before the search binary is invoked, it is
possible for a hacker with sufficient know-how to craft a search that could
cause commands embedded in the search string to be invoked on the host
system.


III. Solution


IMPORTANT: Please note that if you have obtained patches from Excite or a
third party site prior to 1/16/98, you do not have the most recent version
of the patch. Please visit the patches page referenced below to obtain the
latest vresion of the patches, which have evaluated and tested internally,
as well as by CERT (http://www.cert.org).

The security hole can be corrected by replacing single Perl library file
that is part of the EWS1.1 distribution. There are two new versions of
this file available at http://www.excite.com/navigate/patches.html. One
version is for Unix platforms, the other is for Windows NT platforms.
Changes are confined to two subroutines within the architext_query.pl
library file. The subroutines in question are 'MakeQuery' and
'MakeGather'.

To apply the patch, simply replace the file architext_query.pl, which
appears in the 'perllib' subdirectory of the EWS installation, with one of
the files posted at the URL provided above. Note that comments at the top
of the file indicate which operating system it is intended for, either Unix
platforms, or Windows NT platforms.

For Unix platforms, the changes made to these routines invoke the search
binaries using Perl's 'exec', which calls C's execvp(3), thus bypassing any
shell processing of the command. By avoiding shell processing of the
command, the security hole is closed and prevents any attacks using
shell-based hacking.

It is not possible to use the same solution in the Windows NT
implementation of Perl, so the patch for Windows NT takes a different
approach, by defining a set of legal characters for a search string, and
then 'sanitizing' the string by removing any characters that are not
members of the set of legal characters.

For more information, please visit http://www.excite.com/navigate.

========================FORWARDED TEXT ENDS HERE=============================

If you believe that your system has been compromised, contact the CERT
Coordination Center or your representative in the Forum of Incident Response
and Security Teams (FIRST). See http://www.first.org/team-info/.

We strongly urge you to encrypt any sensitive information you send by email.
The CERT Coordination Center can support a shared DES key and PGP. Contact
the CERT staff for more information.

Location of CERT PGP key
ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/CERT_PGP.key


CERT Contact Information
- ------------------------
Email cert@cert.org

Phone +1 412-268-7090 (24-hour hotline)
CERT personnel answer 8:30-5:00 p.m. EST
(GMT-5)/EDT(GMT-4), and are on call for
emergencies during other hours.

Fax +1 412-268-6989

Postal address
CERT Coordination Center
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
USA

CERT publications, information about FIRST representatives, and other
security-related information are available from
http://www.cert.org/
ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/

CERT advisories and bulletins are also posted on the USENET newsgroup
comp.security.announce

To be added to our mailing list for CERT advisories and bulletins, send your
email address to
cert-advisory-request@cert.org
In the subject line, type
SUBSCRIBE your-email-address



* Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The CERT Coordination Center is part of the Software Engineering
Institute (SEI). The SEI is sponsored by the U. S. Department of Defense.


This file: ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/cert_bulletins/VB-98.01.excite




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========================FORWARDED TEXT ENDS HERE=============================

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has
established a Federal Computer Incident response Capability (FedCIRC)
to assist federal civilians agencies in their incident handling
efforts by providing proactive and reactive computer security related
services. FedCIRC is a partnership among NIST, the Computer Incident
Advisory Capability (CIAC), and the CERT* Coordination Center
(CERT/CC).

If you believe that your system has been compromised, please contact
FedCIRC:

Telephone: +1 888 282 0870
Email: fedcirc@fedcirc.gov
Web Server: http://www.fedcirc.gov/

* Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

The CERT Coordination Center is part of the Software Engineering
Institute. The Software Engineering Institute is sponsored by the
U.S. Department of Defense.

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.

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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