Weekly Solaris Security Digest
2001/05/21 to 2001/05/27

By Seán Boran (sean at boran.com) for SecurityPortal

Weekly Solaris Security Digest Archive
http://securityportal.com/research/research.wss.html

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• No new Solaris vulnerabilities.
• No Third-party vulnerabilities.
• No new Solaris patches, but patch bundles have changed.
• Interesting Articles this week: Passwords, Perl, TCT, Routing, LDAP+NIS, CIS benchmark.
• Discussions summary: YASSP & Focus-sun.
• Tip of the Week: Solaris Fingerprinting

New Solaris Vulnerabilities this Week

 none 

none.

Solaris vulnerabilities pending

Over the last few weeks, we reported on several Solaris vulnerabilities. Those which are not yet covered by Solaris patches are listed below. See previous digests for a more detailed analysis.

mailx buffer Overflow
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/bugtraq/2001-05/0016.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/bottom.html?vid=2610  

Status: local sgid 'mail' exploit. Sun were notified on 18th April and patches should be forthcoming.

Workaround: disable sgid on 'mailx'. Brief tests on Solaris 8 have not shown any noticeable side effects to me: outgoing email can still be sent to remote servers and incoming email can still be read. There may be locking problems however with locally delivered email.

Xsun HOME buffer overflow vulnerability
http://www.eEye.com/html/Research/Advisories/solxsun.html
http://securityfocus.com/vdb/bottom.html?vid=2561

Status: Local SUID exploit.

Workaround: Remove the SUID permissions. It should continue to work fine if Xsun is run via dtlogin or xdm. Recent patches from Sun include 108376-22 (Solaris 7) 108652-29 (Solaris 8), but there are no notes in the READMEs to indicate that they addressed this issue.

SNMP to DMI mapper daemon

Status: Remote exploit being actively abused, no patches yet (Sun bug id 4412996).

Workaround: Disable DMI daemons. Based on reports to the CERT/CC, intruders are using the snmpXdmid vulnerability to compromise hosts and then install Carko, minor variant of stacheldraht, a widely used DDoS tool.
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/CFCN-4UMQEC
http://www.cert.org/incident_notes/IN-2001-04.html
Recent patches from Sun include 108869-05 (Solaris 8), 108870-05 (Solaris 8 x86) and 107709 (Solaris 7) but it's unclear if these solve this issue, as no reference is made to the above Sun bug ID. The Solaris 8 patch README 108869-05, released on 9th May indicated only a fix for:
"Bug id: 4404944 libssasnmp changes the syslog message format"

kcsSUNWIOsolf.so KCMS_PROFILES environment variable

Status: Local SUID exploit, no patches yet.

Workaround: Disable SUID, side effects are minimal.
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/bugtraq/2001-04/0203.html
http://lsd-pl.net/files/get?SOLARIS/solsparc_kcssunwiosolf

kcms_configure vulnerability

Status: Local SUID exploit of command line options, no patches yet.

Workaround: Disable SUID, side effects are minimal.
http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AD20010409.html

CDE dtsession LANG environment variable

Status: Local SUID exploit, no patches yet.

Workaround: On servers not requiring a GUI, the SUID can be removed, on a new Solaris 2.8 workstation I removed the suid bit and the CDE desktop continued to function. However, the screen-saver will no longer work since it needs to access /etc/shadow (unless you use PAM for authentication).
http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/bottom.html?vid=2603
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/bugtraq/2001-04/0203.html
http://lsd-pl.net/files/get?SOLARIS/solx86_dtsession

ftpd #1 globbing buffer overflows

Status: Apparently it's not so easy to exploit, but the ftp daemon can be crashed and a core file created which may contain /etc/shadow. So, it's less serious that originally reported.

Workaround: Watch your ftp servers carefully for core dumps, consider restricting access by IP address.
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/SVHN-4VN6DT
http://securityfocus.com/vdb/bottom.html?vid=2601

ftpd #2 CWD Username Enumeration

Status: Remote exploit, low impact (allows an attacker to recognize valid usernames).

Workaround: Watch your ftp servers carefully.
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/bugtraq/2001-04/0181.html
http://securityfocus.com/vdb/bottom.html?vid=2564

NTP buffer overflow

Status: Serious remote exploit, no patches yet.

Workaround: Watch your NTP servers carefully, restricting access by IP address. One contract customer reports that an "emergency fix" can be got from Sun.
http://securityfocus.com/vdb/bottom.html?vid=2540

ipcs Timezone buffer overflow vulnerability

Status: Local SUID exploit, no patches yet.

Workaround: Disable SUID, minimal side effects.
http://www.eEye.com/html/Research/Advisories/solipcs.html
http://securityfocus.com/vdb/bottom.html?vid=2581

Patches

In this section we aim to inform you of new patches published by Sun. Patches are published (on ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches) in two ways:

1. As a recommended cluster of patches that can be installed in one go and used to bring a system up to date quickly. A report for each cluster is available. We compare it with the reports from the previous week.
    
2. Individual patches to fix specific problems. A patch reports lists all patches and their versions. We compare patches in the recommended and security sections of this report with the report published the previous week.

We analyze both reports since changes in one are not always reflected in the other.

1. The latest Solaris "Recommended & Security Patch clusters" are as follows:

Solaris 2.5.1, May/16/01:

none

Solaris 2.6, May/23/01:

105338-27  CDE 1.2: dtmail patch
105633-53  OpenWindows 3.6: Xsun patch
105210-38  SunOS 5.6: libaio, libc & watchmalloc patch

Solaris 7, May/23/01:    

107684-02  SunOS 5.7: sendmail patch

Solaris 8, May/23/01:

108875-09  SunOS 5.8: c2audit patch
108652-31  X11 6.4.1 Xsun patch
108528-08  SunOS 5.8: kernel update patch
109041-04  SunOS 5.8: sockfs patch
109322-07  SunOS 5.8: libnsl patch

Solaris 8_x86, May/23/01:

111334-01  SunOS 5.8_x86: /kernel/drv/adp patch
108529-08  SunOS 5.8_x86: kernel update patch
109042-04  SunOS 5.8_x86: sockfs patch
108653-26  X11 6.4.1_x86: Xsun patch 

2. New or updated individual security/recommended patches.

none

News & Articles

LinuxSecurity

Encrypted Tunnels using SSH and Mindterm
Duane Dunston
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/feature_stories/feature_story-88.html
 

CERT

Installing and Operating ssldump 0.9 Beta 1 on Solaris
http://www.cert.org/security-improvement/implementations/i091.01.html  

Installing The Coroner's Toolkit and using the mactime utility
http://www.cert.org/security-improvement/implementations/i091.01.html

Using The Coroner's Toolkit : Harvesting information with grave-robber 
http://www.cert.org/security-improvement/implementations/i046.02.html

Using The Coroner's Toolkit : Rescuing files with lazarus 
http://www.cert.org/security-improvement/implementations/i046.03.html  

CERT were victim of a DOS attack this week:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5083371,00.html
 

Solaris Guide

GNOME 1.4 for Solaris
http://www.solarisguide.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-05-23-002-05-NW-GC  

Now's your chance to try out an early preview release of "Exploring the GNOME 1.4 Desktop for the Solaris 8 Operating Environment."

Sun

Running Multiple Solaris Operating Environment Naming Services on a Client
Tom Bialaski
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0501/Running.html  

The native LDAP client installation program assumes that you will not be running another naming service on your client. Some customers, who I have worked with, do not want to disable NIS when they configure native LDAP. This can be done, but there is no readily available document which describes how to do it. The article not only describes this procedure, but also highlights best practices for running NIS and LDAP together.

 

Datacenter Naming Scheme
Mark Garner
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0501/Naming.html  

Eighty percent of outages are allegedly the result of people or process  issues. An intuitive and informative naming scheme can define and  highlight the composition and function of components within a service infrastructure. The article looks at the merits of such a naming scheme and includes an example system for servers, storage, networks and cables that may help reduce operational error.

 

UNIX Insider

Building blocks to security: Passwords -- the first line of defense
S. Lee Henry
http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1313/UIR010509buildingblocks/  

Passwords -- the first line of defense and the oldest form of security on Unix systems -- might seem a very tired topic. You might even think there would be nothing left to say about passwords but, even today, people are making the same basic mistakes -- choosing obvious passwords, writing passwords down, or sharing passwords -- that they were making 10 years or more ago.

 

O'Reilly Network

Perl Program Repair Shop and Red Flags
Mark-Jason Dominus
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2001/05/18/perl_redflags.html

 

Understanding Routing Protocols
Michael Norton
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2001/05/22/net_2nd_lang.html

 

The Agenda VR3: Real Linux in a PDA
Chris Halsall
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2001/05/18/agenda_pda.html  

Comment: When are we going to get Solaris on a PDA?  :-)

 BSD Today

IP Filter License Change?
http://www.bsdtoday.com/2001/May/News489.html  

 

CIS

Solaris Security Benchmark and Tools

The Solaris V1.0 Benchmark and Scanning/Scoring Tools are now available. They may be downloaded from www.cisecurity.org .
Comment: This tool is useful and your feedback is valuable. There has already been quite a bit of discussion on the Yassp list (see below).

Mailing Lists

Focus-Sun Discussions Threads

05/23/01 Speeding Up OpenSSH
http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/archive.pike?fromthread=0&mid=186423&list=92&threads=0&start=2001-05-20&end=2001-05-26& 

 

05/23/01 FW: ASET & umask
http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/archive.pike?list=92&end=2001-05-26&start=2001-05-20&fromthread=0&threads=1&tid=186160&  

05/21/01 ANNOUNCE: The Solaris Fingerprint Database - A Security Tool for Solaris
http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/archive.pike?list=92&end=2001-05-26&start=2001-05-20&fromthread=0&threads=1&tid=185926&  

05/18/01 Shells being executed
http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/archive.pike?fromthread=0&threads=1&tid=185364&end=2001-05-19&list=92&start=2001-05-13&  

YASSP (the Solaris Hardening Tool) Developers' List Discussions

YASSP beta 15 is still current. See also http://www.yassp.org .

Discussions this week:

cisecurity audit tool vs YASSP
http://www.theorygroup.com/Archive/YASSP/2001/msg00184.html

 

Oracle after YASSP is installed..
http://www.theorygroup.com/Archive/YASSP/2001/msg00181.html  

 

Logging login/logout messages via syslog
http://www.theorygroup.com/Archive/YASSP/2001/msg00180.html

 

reyassping after patches.
http://www.theorygroup.com/Archive/YASSP/2001/msg00179.html  

 

yassp - pkgadd problem is related to root's umask.
http://www.theorygroup.com/Archive/YASSP/2001/msg00178.html  

Security Tools

Security tool news is summarized in the Weekly Security Tools Digest.
http://securityportal.com/topnews/weekly/tools.html

Updates to General free tools this week include Mod_ssl, OpenLDAP and Apache.
Auditing and Intrusion Monitoring tools include SnortSnarf, LIDS, BigBrother and John the Ripper.
Firewalls for UNIX/Linux/BSD & Cross-platform include GShield, FloppyFw, netfilter and rTables Linux Firewall.
Tools for Linux/Unix/Cross Platform include AES Encryption for Shell Script,  Ethereal, SILC, Samhain, FreeVSD and 3 other tools.
Tools for Windows include RATS.

Apache 1.3.20: This version of Apache is principally a security fix release which closes a problem under the Windows and OS2 ports that would segfault the server in response to a carefully constructed URL.  It also fixes some potential configuration quirks present in the 1.3.19 release.

Tip of the Week: Solaris Fingerprinting

Sun has just announced a very interesting service:

"The Solaris Fingerprint Database (sfpDB) is a free SunSolve Online service that enables users to verify the integrity of files distributed with the Solaris Operating Environment. Examples of these files include the /bin/su executable file, Solaris patches, and unbundled products such as Sun Forte Developer Tools. The list of checksums, generated for a system, must be updated after the system is modified by patch installation and software installations. The issue with these tools has always been verifying that the files used to generate the baseline checksums are correct and current."

...... "Our goal is to provide a comprehensive collection of digital fingerprint for Solaris software. To this end, the Solaris Fingerprint Database is updated daily, and it now contains close to 1 million digital fingerprints for files used in the Solaris Operating Environment, Solaris patches, and unbundled products.
Limitations: Currently, foreign language versions of the Solaris Operating Environment and many encryption products are not supported. If you would like to suggest a product to be added to sfpDB, please send email to fingerprints@sun.com."

http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0501/Fingerprint.html
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0501/Fingerprint.pd
Alex Noordergraaf, Lou Ordorica

I like to use tripwire to verify file integrity on critical Solaris systems, but tripwire does have it's limits. For instance if you've never run tripwire on a system, there is obviously little tripwire can do to detect changes. The Sun method however, can detect changes on a system that has never had an integrity checking tool installed! Nice.

To try it out, run md5 on a Solaris binary of your choice, and paste it into the appropriate field on http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/fileFingerprints.pl. If you paste more than one entry, make sure they are cleanly separate by newlines. For example, pasting:

MD5(listdgrp)= ee06584223290be70843fe0b807ef1f2
MD5(listusers)= 8e055aebc9825e743374334dd29290d4

results in:

ee06584223290be70843fe0b807ef1f2 - (listdgrp) - 1 match(es)
canonical-path: /usr/bin/listdgrp
package: SUNWcsu
version: 11.8.0,REV=2000.01.08.18.12
architecture: sparc
source: Solaris 8/SPARC

8e055aebc9825e743374334dd29290d4 - (listusers) - 1 match(es)
canonical-path: /usr/bin/listusers
package: SUNWcsu
version: 11.8.0,REV=2000.01.08.18.12
architecture: sparc
source: Solaris 8/SPARC

Accompanying tools: Sun provide a few tools to help with automating the fingerprint checking, which can be downloaded from http://www.sun.com/blueprints/tools/fingerprint_license.html .

"The Solaris Fingerprint Database Companion (sfpC) is a tool designed to automate the process of querying the Solaris Fingerprint Database (sfpDB). sfpC is used to process MD5 file signatures and present the collected database output information in human readable form. The tool eliminates the need for the manual task of cut and pasting MD5 output onto an HTML form.  In addition, the tool performs the necessary checks to enable files of arbitrary size to be processed using multiple queries if necessary." An example of usage:

% find / -type f -perm -2000 -o -perm -4000 \
-exec /opt/md5/md5-sparc {} \;> md5.list
% spfC.pl md5.list

"SideKick is a (bourne shell) tool developed to automate the collection of MD5 file signatures. SideKick can be used to collect signatures for files known to be replaced by "rootkits", files with Set-UID or Set-GID permissions in addition to several other collection methods. SideKick can optionally be used with sfpC to automated the collection and processing of MD5 file signatures. SideKick can also be used in a standalone capacity for distributed signature collection."

 

A new notes

• You can use any md5 tool, not just the once supplied with this toolkit (maybe Sun will bundle md5 at last, in the next Solaris 8 release?).
• More issues are discussed at http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/show.pl?target=content/content7
• I don't see any possibilities for downloading the Sunsolve fingerprint DB, so that one could setup an Intranet server for queries. A quote: "Sun is currently studying how best to publish the full content of the database as we realize that for some applications the web interface to a CGI program is too limiting."

If you have tips you'd like to share with others, contact us.

References and Resources

All weekly digests are archived at:
securityportal.com/research/research.digestarchives.html

A list of Solaris resources and references:
securityportal.com/topnews/weekly/solarisref.html

About the Author

Seán Boran is an IT security consultant based in Switzerland and the author of the online IT Security Cookbook.

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