Symantec VERITAS Storage Foundation Administration Service DoS Vulnerability iDefense Security Advisory 06.01.07 http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/ June 01, 2007 I. BACKGROUND The VERITAS Storage Foundation is made up of the Veritas File System, Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) products and some other utilities. It allows virtualization of storage over a variety of platforms, and contains a remote administration application to configure and monitor the elements of the storage network. More information can be found at the following URL. http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/products/overview.jsp?pcid=1020&pvid=203_1 II. DESCRIPTION Remote exploitation of an input validation vulnerability in VERITAS Software Corp.'s Storage Foundation 4.3 Enterprise Administration service could allow an unauthenticated attacker to consume excessive resources or crash the service. The vulnerability specifically exists in the handling of packets delivered to the VVR Administration service port, TCP/8199. By sending specially crafted requests to a vulnerable host, attackers are able to control the size value for memory allocation. In cases where requests are made for more memory than the system is able to allocate, the service attempts to write to an invalid pointer, which crashes the service. If allocation succeeds, the resulting memory will not be released until the connection is closed. This allows a resource consumption denial of service attack. III. ANALYSIS Successful exploitation of this vulnerability allows remote attackers to cause the affected service to terminate. As no checks are made that the values given make sense, it is possible to cause the service to allocate large amounts of memory, potentially causing severely degraded system performance and instability in other processes. Crashing the administration service, which is restarted after 60 seconds, would most likely not directly impact the operation of the replication service itself. However, it likely the resource consumption variation would prevent the affected system from being usable for the duration of the attack. IV. DETECTION iDefense Labs confirmed that VERITAS Storage Foundation for Windows version 4.3.01 is vulnerable. It is suspected that all previous versions of are vulnerable. V. WORKAROUND Applying filtering to the affected port, such that only hosts an administrator uses can access it, will help mitigate exposure to the vulnerability. VI. VENDOR RESPONSE Symantec has addressed this vulnerability with a software update. For more information consult their advisory at the following URL. http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2007.06.01a.html VII. CVE INFORMATION The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the name CVE-2007-1593 to this issue. This is a candidate for inclusion in the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org/), which standardizes names for security problems. VIII. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE 10/11/2006 Initial vendor notification 10/12/2006 Initial vendor response 06/01/2007 Coordinated public disclosure IX. CREDIT This vulnerability was reported to iDefense by CIRT.DK. Additionally, iDefense Labs discovered the ability to consume excessive resources while researching this vulnerability. Get paid for vulnerability research http://labs.idefense.com/methodology/vulnerability/vcp.php Free tools, research and upcoming events http://labs.idefense.com/ X. LEGAL NOTICES Copyright © 2007 iDefense, Inc. Permission is granted for the redistribution of this alert electronically. It may not be edited in any way without the express written consent of iDefense. If you wish to reprint the whole or any part of this alert in any other medium other than electronically, please e-mail customerservice@idefense.com for permission. Disclaimer: The information in the advisory is believed to be accurate at the time of publishing based on currently available information. Use of the information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition. There are no warranties with regard to this information. Neither the author nor the publisher accepts any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, this information.