-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ****************************************************************************** ------ ----- ----- --- ----- | ----- ---- | | | | | |--- | | | | | | | | | |-- | | | | |-- | | | | | | | | \ | | ----- ---- ----- ----- | \ ----- A D V I S O R Y 97.10 ****************************************************************************** Topic: Vulnerability in xlock Source: CERT/CC Creation Date: May 7, 1997 Last Updated: May 7, 1997 To aid in the wide distribution of essential security information, FedCIRC is forwarding the following information from . 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============================ ============================================================================= CERT* Advisory CA-97.13 Original issue date: May 7, 1997 Last revised: -- Topic: Vulnerability in xlock - - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The CERT Coordination Center has received reports that a buffer overflow condition exists in some implementations of xlock. This vulnerability makes it possible for local users (users with access to an account on the system) to execute arbitrary programs as a privileged user. Exploitation information involving this vulnerability has been made publicly available. If your system is vulnerable, the CERT/CC team recommends installing a patch from your vendor. If you are not certain whether your system is vulnerable or if you know that your system is vulnerable and you cannot add a patch immediately, we urge you to apply the workaround described in Section III.B. We will update this advisory as we receive additional information. Please check our advisory files regularly for updates that relate to your site. - - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Description xlock is a program that allows a user to "lock" an X terminal. A buffer overflow condition exists in some implementations of xlock. It is possible attain unauthorized access to a system by engineering a particular environment and calling a vulnerable version of xlock that has setuid or setgid bits set. Information about vulnerable versions must be obtained from vendors. Some vendor information can be found in Appendix A of this advisory. Exploitation information involving this vulnerability has been made publicly available. Note that this problem is different from that discussed in CERT Advisory CA-97.11.libXt. II. Impact Local users are able to execute arbitrary programs as a privileged user without authorization. III. Solution Install a patch from your vendor as described in Solution A. If you are not certain whether your system is vulnerable or if you know that your system is vulnerable and you cannot install a patch immediately, we recommend Solution B. A. Obtain and install a patch for this problem. Below is a list of vendors who have provided information about xlock. Details are in Appendix A of this advisory; we will update the appendix as we receive more information. If your vendor's name is not on this list, the CERT/CC did not hear from that vendor. Please contact your vendor directly. Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI) Cray Research - A Silicon Graphics Company Data General Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation FreeBSD, Inc. Hewlett-Packard Company IBM Corporation LINUX NEC Corporation The Open Group [This group distributes the publicly available software that was formerly distributed by X Consortium] Solbourne Sun Microsystems, Inc. B. We recommend the following workaround if you are not certain whether your system is vulnerable or if you know that your system is vulnerable and you cannot install a patch immediately. 1. Find and disable any copies of xlock that exist on your system and that have the setuid or setgid bits set. 2. Install a version of xlock known to be immune to this vulnerablility. One such supported tool is xlockmore. The latest version of this tool is 4.02, and you should ensure that this is the version you are using. This utility can be obtained from the following site: ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/xlockmore-4.02.tar.gz MD5 (xlockmore-4.02.tar.gz) = c158e6b4b99b3cff4b52b39219dbfe0e You can also obtain this version from mirror sites. A list of these sites will be displayed if you are not able to access the above archive due to load. ........................................................................... Appendix A - Vendor Information Below is a list of the vendors who have provided information for this advisory. We will update this appendix as we receive additional information. If you do not see your vendor's name, the CERT/CC did not hear from that vendor. Please contact the vendor directly. Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI) ===================================== BSD/OS is not vulnerable to the problem in xlock since our xlock is not setuid. Cray Research - A Silicon Graphics Company ========================================== Cray Research does not include xlock in its X Window releases, so we are not at risk on the xlock buffer overflow problem. Data General Corporation ======================== The xlock sources (xlockmore-3.7) that DG includes in its contributed software package have been modified to remove this vulnerability. These will be available when release 8 comes out. We also recommend that our customers who have the current version should change the sprintf calls in resource.c to snprintf calls, rebuild and reinstall the package. Digital Equipment Corporation ============================= This reported problem is not present for Digital's ULTRIX or Digital UNIX Operating Systems Software. FreeBSD, Inc. ============= The xlockmore version we ship in our ports collection is vulnerable in all shipped releases. The port in FreeBSD-current is fixed. Solution is to install the latest xlockmore version (4.02). Hewlett-Packard Company ======================= We ship an suid root program vuelock that is based on xlock. It does have the vulnerability. The only workaround is to remove the executable, the patch is "in process". IBM Corporation =============== AIX is vulnerable to the conditions described in this advisory. The following APARs will be released soon: AIX 3.2: APAR IX68189 AIX 4.1: APAR IX68190 AIX 4.2: APAR IX68191 IBM and AIX are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. LINUX ===== Red Hat: Not vulnerable Caldera: Not vulnerable Debian: An updated package is on the Debian site SuSE: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/SuSE-Linux/suse_update/S.u.S.E.-4.4.1/xap1/xlock And in general the new Xlockmore release fixes the problems. NEC Corporation =============== UX/4800 Not vulnerable for all versions. EWS-UX/V(Rel4.2MP) Not vulnerable for all versions. EWS-UX/V(Rel4.2) Not vulnerable for all versions. UP-UX/V(Rel4.2MP) Not vulnerable for all versions. The Open Group ============== Publicly available software that was formerly distributed by the X Consortium - Not vulnerable. Solbourne ========= Solbourne is not vulnerable to this attack. Sun Microsystems, Inc. ====================== We are producing patches for OpenWindows 3.0 for Sun OS versions 4.1.3_U1, 4.1.4, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, and 5.5.1. - - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The CERT Coordination Center thanks David Hedley for reporting the original problem and Kaleb Keithley at The Open Group for his support in the development of this advisory. - - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 (see http://www.first.org/team-info/). CERT/CC 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 Using encryption We strongly urge you to encrypt sensitive information sent by email. We can support a shared DES key or PGP. Contact the CERT/CC for more information. Location of CERT PGP key ftp://info.cert.org/pub/CERT_PGP.key Getting security information CERT publications and other security information are available from http://www.cert.org/ ftp://info.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 advisories and bulletins, send email to cert-advisory-request@cert.org In the subject line, type SUBSCRIBE your-email-address - - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Copyright 1997 Carnegie Mellon University This material may be reproduced and distributed without permission provided it is used for noncommercial purposes and the copyright statement is included. 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://info.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-97.13.xlock http://www.cert.org click on "CERT Advisories" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Revision history ========================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. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.3, an Emacs/PGP interface iQCVAwUBM5bcUnVP+x0t4w7BAQFIlAP/e3s4T1jQ/vWqff4K7ZAslW5E/k3osRyo NylsFHuuQ79Wlek8+gmcFcfmQ6l9iOiiJvwYUfV9fJRxOBbn95B+SNRLpgXjKm41 X5Mt22sGvHLVL7V1d233BOS1d47PvNnhg8nXLC9Uy0B0TgQJxKgaw5uKBoRU97YO yJn5EF3qmd4= =FO8d -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----