_______________________________________________________________________________ I N F O R M A T I O N A N A R C H Y 2 K 0 2 www.nmrc.org/InfoAnarchy Nomad Mobile Research Centre A D V I S O R Y www.nmrc.org hellNBak (hellnbak@nmrc.org) 19March2002 _______________________________________________________________________________ Platforms : Nokia Appliances Application : RealSecure Network Intrusion Detection (NIDS) Version 6.0 Severity : Medium Synopsis -------- This advisory documents an issue when using RealSecure NIDS on Nokia appliances. It seems that during development, a test system named "starscream" and test user "skank" was used as it was left behind in the IPSO image in the ISS.ACCESS file as a KeyManager. There is the potential that this information, depending on the configuration of the NIDS, can be used to push new pubkey files to the sensor, reconfigure or take control of the NIDS daemon and daemon components. Details ------- When you install RealSecure on any platform a file named ISS.ACCESS is created and used for various configuration settings including the following lines; --ISS Access 6.0-- [\]; [\Roles]; [\Roles\KeyAdministrator\]; [\Roles\KeyAdministrator\machinename_username\]; [\Roles\KeyAdministrator\starscream_skank\]; [\Roles\MasterStatusManager\]; The Roles\KeyAdministrator line is used to determine the machine name and username of what ISS calls the KeyAdministrator. This user has the ability to manage the keys used when communicating with the daemon. This line is added during installation but the second line, \startscream_skank is present in the IPSO as a "default". This does not exist on any other platform or in the HIDS RealSecure product. The vulnerability lies in the fact that as a KeyAdministrator, you essentially can control the functions of the daemon including what events it monitors for and how it alerts. It is important to understand that this is only possible if RealSecure is configured to rely on the console system to push the necessary public keys to it, which is the default method of installation. If the Nokia Voyager web applet is used to install this IPSO you do not have the option to turn on authentication. Authentication in this case means that the administrator must, via sneakernet or other secure channels manually copy the necessary keys to the sensor. Mitigating Factors ------------------- The RealSecure NIDS sensor listens on two TCP ports, TCP-2998 is used to control the daemon while TCP-901 is used to monitor events. Obviously, you do not want to allow these ports to pass through your firewall. In an ideal situation, the NIDS sensor should have a shadow interface enabled to monitor and only communicate back to the console via a private mangement network that is not accessable by any other devices. It is also a good idea to not allow the NIDS sensor to accept new public keys directly from a console but only when copied manually to the system. Tested configurations --------------------- RealSecure 6.0 was tested, it is unknown if other versions are effected. ISS is aware of the issue and has removed this line from version 6.5. The version of Nokia software does not make a difference although this does not exist on any other platform such as Windows NT, or Solaris. Vendor Response --------------- Thanks to Ring Zero for taking this one to the vendor for me. Here is a portion of the email received back from ISS. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 12:22:05 -0500 From: "Lamb, Kris (ISS Atlanta)" To: 'Ring Zero' Subject: RE: Anomaly in RealSecure As far as the starscream_skank, that was a QA box from the product development team that was accidentally left in the iss.access when IPSO shipped. We have already addressed this with Support and all customers have been notified to remove that entry. It was removed in IPSO 6.5. ----------------------------------------- Solution/Workaround ------------------- If you are running RealSecure version 6.0 and below you need to simply stop the NIDS daemon and edit the ISS.ACCESS file and remove the following line: [\Roles\KeyAdministrato\starscream_skank\]; If you installed the IPSO manually and turned on authentication you are unaffected but should probably remove the line anyways. Comments/Rants -------------- No NMRC advisory, let alone one written by me would be complete without some sort of rant so here it goes; Responsible Disclosure and the IETF: I applaud Chris Wysopal and Steve Christey for their efforts in attempting to bring a standard to vulnerability disclosure. I may not have agreed with the entire document but at least these two guys were willing to take input from the community as a whole. I hope the standard finds a home and eventually evolves to something acceptable by the research community as a whole. Trust me folks -- we do not want government, or any vendor to do this for us. Too bad the IETF doesn't have the balls or brains to deal with this issue. ISS: While their products can use some improvement, especially when attempting to implement it in a large mixed environment I am impressed with the level of cooperation and support being offered by ISS. I take back most of the bad things I have ever said about you........ :-) Greetz ------ Thanks to Ring Zero for bringing this issue to the attention of ISS. Copyright --------- This advisory is Copyright (c) 2002 NMRC - feel free to distribute it without edits but fear us if you use this advisory in any type of commercial endeavour. To be posted on: NMRC.ORG web site, VulnWatch, and Bugtraq _______________________________________________________________________________ -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "I don't intend to offend, I offend with my intent" hellNbak@nmrc.org http://www.nmrc.org/~hellnbak -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-