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                     Secunia Research 08/04/2008

  - Symantec Mail Security Applix Graphics Parsing Vulnerabilities -

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Table of Contents

Affected Software....................................................1
Severity.............................................................2
Vendor's Description of Software.....................................3
Description of Vulnerability.........................................4
Solution.............................................................5
Time Table...........................................................6
Credits..............................................................7
References...........................................................8
About Secunia........................................................9
Verification........................................................10

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1) Affected Software 

* Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0.1 p187
* Symantec Mail Security for Exchange 5.0.7.373
* Symantec Mail Security for Domino 7.5.0.19

NOTE: Other versions may also be affected.

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2) Severity 

Rating: Highly critical
Impact: From remote
Where:  System access

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3) Vendor's Description of Software 

"Symantec Mail Security 5.0 for SMTP provides high-performance,
integrated mail protection against virus threats, spam, and other
unwanted content at the earliest point of network entry.".

Product Link:
http://www.symantec.com/business/products/overview.jsp?pcid=2250&pvid=845_1

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4) Description of Vulnerability

Secunia Research has discovered some vulnerabilities Symantec Mail
Security, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a
vulnerable system when scanning Applix documents.

1) An unsafe call to "sscanf()" when parsing the "ENCODING" attribute
of the "*BEGIN" tag can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer
overflow.

2) A boundary error when parsing overly long tokens from the input
file can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow.
 
3) A boundary error when parsing the initial "*BEGIN" tag can be
exploited to cause stack-based buffer overflow.
  
Successful exploitation of the above vulnerabilities allows execution
of arbitrary code.
 
4) A logic error when parsing long tokens can result in an infinite
loop.  Exploitation will result in maximum CPU usage until an
application-configured timeout expires. In some cases memory usage
will increase until the OS terminates the process.

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5) Solution 

For Symantec Mail Security for SMTP, update to version 5.0.1 patch
189, which resolves the vulnerabilities.

The vulnerabilities will be addressed in upcoming patches for Symantec
Mail Security for Exchange and Symantec Mail Security for Domino.

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6) Time Table 

21/11/2007 - Autonomy, Symantec and other vendors notified.
21/11/2007 - Autonomy responds.
21/11/2007 - Symantec responds.
11/03/2008 - Symantec releases p189 of SMSSMTP 5.0.1 containing fix.
14/03/2008 - Secunia notifies other vendors of published fix.
08/04/2008 - Public disclosure.

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7) Credits 

Discovered by Dyon Balding, Secunia Research.

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8) References

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned 
CVE-2007-5405 for the overflows and CVE-2007-5406 for the infinite
loop.

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9) About Secunia

Secunia offers vulnerability management solutions to corporate
customers with verified and reliable vulnerability intelligence
relevant to their specific system configuration:

http://corporate.secunia.com/

Secunia also provides a publicly accessible and comprehensive advisory
database as a service to the security community and private 
individuals, who are interested in or concerned about IT-security.

http://secunia.com/

Secunia believes that it is important to support the community and to
do active vulnerability research in order to aid improving the 
security and reliability of software in general:

http://corporate.secunia.com/secunia_research/33/

Secunia regularly hires new skilled team members. Check the URL below to
see currently vacant positions:

http://secunia.com/secunia_vacancies/

Secunia offers a FREE mailing list called Secunia Security Advisories:

http://secunia.com/secunia_security_advisories/ 

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10) Verification 

Please verify this advisory by visiting the Secunia website:
http://secunia.com/secunia_research/2007-98/

Complete list of vulnerability reports published by Secunia Research:
http://secunia.com/secunia_research/

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