Symantec Norton Ghost 10 Recovery Points Insecure Password Storage
Vulnerability

iDefense Security Advisory 04.26.07
http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/
Apr 26, 2007

I. BACKGROUND

Symantec Norton Ghost is a backup and recovery application designed to
allow users to completely restore their systems to previous snapshots.
More information can be found from the vendors site at the following
URL.

http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10

II. DESCRIPTION

Norton Ghost allows administrators and other power users to schedule
snapshots of local disks for backup and recovery purposes. If these
recovery points are set to save to a remote network share Ghost will
prompt the user to enter a user name and password for the share.

Password information entered into Ghost for this purpose is encrypted
and saved to the local file system in the applications home directory
which has read access allowed for all users.

The encryption key used by Ghost to decrypt these stored credentials is
derived from the MD5 hash of the plain text user name stored in the
configuration file. Since every user on the system has read access to
these configuration files, any user can decrypt the stored passwords.

III. ANALYSIS

This vulnerability is the result of insecure encryption utilization plus
insecure file permissions.

In order for this exploit to have an impact, administrators would either
have to configure client machines to save restore points images to a
private share, or the vulnerable machine would have to be shared by
several users who each saved their restore points images to private
shares.

IV. DETECTION

iDefense verified the existence of this vulnerability on Norton Ghost
10.0. Other versions may be vulnerable as well.

V. WORKAROUND

If your current backup policy is vulnerable to this exploit scenario one
possible work around is to configure client machines to save images to
user network shares so that the configuration files only contain the
individual users network credentials.

VI. VENDOR RESPONSE

Symantec has addressed this vulnerability with a software update. The
update is available via their LiveUpdate channels. For more
information, consult their advisory at the following URL.

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2007.04.26.html

VII. CVE INFORMATION

A Mitre Corp. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) number has not
been assigned yet.

VIII. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE

01/02/2007  Initial vendor notification
03/21/2007  Second vendor notification
03/22/2007  Initial vendor response
04/26/2007  Coordinated public disclosure

IX. CREDIT

This vulnerability was reported to iDefense by Pravus.

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X. LEGAL NOTICES

Copyright © 2007 iDefense, Inc.

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at the time of publishing based on currently available information. Use
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