-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- __________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN SGI Seyon Security Vulnerability September 1, 1998 18:00 GMT Number I-089 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: A vulnerability has been identified in the seyon program. The Seyon package is distributed as an IRIX inst image called "fw_MMSEYON" on the SGI Freeware 1.0 and 2.0 CDROMs. PLATFORM: IRIX where "fw_MMSEYON" IRIX inst image prior to and including v2.14c has been installed. DAMAGE: If exploited, a user could gain root access. SOLUTION: Remove the vulnerable seyon package or remove the set-uid bit of the seyon program. Steps are listed under 'Temporary Solution'. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY This vulnerability has been publicly discussed in Usenet ASSESSMENT: newsgroups and mailing lists. This vulnerability is being actively exploited on IRIX systems. ______________________________________________________________________________ [ Start Silicon Graphics Inc. Advisory ] - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ______________________________________________________________________________ Silicon Graphics Inc. Security Advisory Title: Seyon Security Vulnerability Number: 19980803-01-I Date: August 27, 1998 ______________________________________________________________________________ Silicon Graphics provides this information freely to the SGI user community for its consideration, interpretation, implementation and use. Silicon Graphics recommends that this information be acted upon as soon as possible. Silicon Graphics provides the information in this Security Advisory on an "AS-IS" basis only, and disclaims all warranties with respect thereto, express, implied or otherwise, including, without limitation, any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall Silicon Graphics be liable for any loss of profits, loss of business, loss of data or for any indirect, special, exemplary, incidental or consequential damages of any kind arising from your use of, failure to use or improper use of any of the instructions or information in this Security Advisory. ______________________________________________________________________________ - ------------------------ - ---- Issue Specifics --- - ------------------------ seyon is a serial port communications package for X windows. A vulnerability has been discovered in the seyon program which can lead to a root compromise. Any user who can execute the seyon program can exploit this vulnerability. This vulnerability is being actively exploited. Silicon Graphics, Inc. has investigated the issue and recommends that IRIX system administrators take appropriate steps according to their local site security policies and requirements. - --------------- - ---- Impact --- - --------------- Silicon Graphics distributes the Seyon package as an IRIX inst image called "fw_MSSeyon" on the SGI Freeware 1.0 and 2.0 CDROMs. The "fw_MSSeyon" IRIX inst images are also available on the web at the following SGI Freeware sites: http://freeware.sgi.com/ http://toolbox.sgi.com/TasteOfDT/public/ IRIX customers who have installed "fw_MSSeyon" IRIX inst images from any source prior to and including v2.14c are vulnerable. A local account is required on the vulnerable system in order to exploit this issue locally and remotely. seyon is set-uid program and when exploited, can lead to a root compromise. This vulnerability has been publicly discussed in Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists. This vulnerability is being actively exploited on IRIX systems. - --------------------------- - ---- Temporary Solution --- - --------------------------- There are two temporary solutions available for this security issue. I) Remove the vulnerable seyon package. II) Remove the set-uid bit of the seyon program. SGI recommends that IRIX system administrators take appropriate steps according to their local site security policies and requirements. I) To remove the vulnerable Seyon package use the following steps. 1) Check to see if the vulnerable subsystem is installed. Version 2.14c of fw_MSSeyon is vulnerable. % versions -b fw_MSSeyon Name Date Description I fw_MSSeyon 08/26/97 Seyon X Telecommunications Package version 2.14c by Muhammad M. Saggaf 2) Become the root user on the system. % /bin/su - Password: # 3) Remove the vulnerable subsystem. # versions remove fw_MSSeyon 4) Return to previous level. # exit % II) To remove the set-uid bit of the seyon program use the following steps. 1) Check to see if the vulnerable subsystem is installed. Version 2.14c of fw_MSSeyon is vulnerable. % versions -b fw_MSSeyon Name Date Description I fw_MSSeyon 08/26/97 Seyon X Telecommunications Package version 2.14c by Muhammad M. Saggaf 2) Become the root user on the system. % /bin/su - Password: # 3) Remove the set-uid bit. # /usr/bin/chmod u-s /usr/freeware/bin/seyon 4) Verify the new permissions on the program. Note that the program size may be different depending on release. # ls -al /usr/freeware/bin/seyon -rwxr-xr-x 1 root sys 181600 Aug 26 1997 /usr/freeware/bin/seyon 5) Return to previous level. # exit % - ----------------- - ---- Solution --- - ----------------- Silicon Graphics does not distribute patches for SGI Freeware software. At this time, an update or patch is not available from the author of Seyon nor at the main distribution site: ftp://sipb.mit.edu/pub/seyon/notice.sipb If the author of Seyon provides an update or patch, future release of SGI Freeware will attempt to include the update or patch. Future releases of SGI Freeware software will be hosted at: http://freeware.sgi.com/ - ------------------------- - ---- Acknowledgments --- - ------------------------- Silicon Graphics wishes to thank the NCSA and other FIRST Organization (http://www.first.org/) members for their assistance in this matter. - ------------------------------------------------------------ - ---- Silicon Graphics Inc. Security Information/Contacts --- - ------------------------------------------------------------ If there are questions about this document, email can be sent to cse-security-alert@sgi.com. ------oOo------ Silicon Graphics provides security information and patches for use by the entire SGI community. This information is freely available to any person needing the information and is available via anonymous FTP and the Web. The primary SGI anonymous FTP site for security information and patches is sgigate.sgi.com (204.94.209.1). Security information and patches are located under the directories ~ftp/security and ~ftp/patches, respectively. The Silicon Graphics Security Headquarters Web page is accessible at the URL http://www.sgi.com/Support/security/security.html. For issues with the patches on the FTP sites, email can be sent to cse-security-alert@sgi.com. For assistance obtaining or working with security patches, please contact your SGI support provider. ------oOo------ Silicon Graphics provides a free security mailing list service called wiretap and encourages interested parties to self-subscribe to receive (via email) all SGI Security Advisories when they are released. Subscribing to the mailing list can be done via the Web (http://www.sgi.com/Support/security/wiretap.html) or by sending email to SGI as outlined below. % mail wiretap-request@sgi.com subscribe wiretap end ^d In the example above, is the email address that you wish the mailing list information sent to. The word end must be on a separate line to indicate the end of the body of the message. The control-d (^d) is used to indicate to the mail program that you are finished composing the mail message. ------oOo------ Silicon Graphics provides a comprehensive customer World Wide Web site. This site is located at http://www.sgi.com/Support/security/security.html. ------oOo------ For reporting *NEW* SGI security issues, email can be sent to security-alert@sgi.com or contact your SGI support provider. A support contract is not required for submitting a security report. ______________________________________________________________________________ This information is provided freely to all interested parties and may be redistributed provided that it is not altered in any way, Silicon Graphics is appropriately credited and the document retains and includes its valid PGP signature. - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNeXo3LQ4cFApAP75AQEzxgP/d64K1bri4G60MXcB1PTxxC1GKDa4r669 msFUodnOjQzA3ryEgNeI79DWBxKcLMj2zc33SdI9s5IcTrFTZ8AyjzWLy7Mz2us8 ui7M1eYUU0hf4jgohxcakZbS6KSTwHlCja3SjUNLJNUY2dWEokQA0nKOdl6zOWzs s19VrQAo7iQ= =uH7x - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- [ End Silicon Graphics Inc. Advisory ] ______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Silicon Graphics Inc. for the information contained in this bulletin. ______________________________________________________________________________ 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. CIAC services are available to DOE, DOE contractors, and the NIH. 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CIAC-BULLETIN for Advisories, highest priority - time critical information and Bulletins, important computer security information; 2. SPI-ANNOUNCE for official news about Security Profile Inspector (SPI) software updates, new features, distribution and availability; 3. SPI-NOTES, for discussion of problems and solutions regarding the use of SPI products. Our mailing lists are managed by a public domain software package called Majordomo, which ignores E-mail header subject lines. To subscribe (add yourself) to one of our mailing lists, send the following request as the E-mail message body, substituting ciac-bulletin, spi-announce OR spi-notes for list-name: E-mail to ciac-listproc@llnl.gov or majordomo@tholia.llnl.gov: subscribe list-name e.g., subscribe ciac-bulletin You will receive an acknowledgment email immediately with a confirmation that you will need to mail back to the addresses above, as per the instructions in the email. This is a partial protection to make sure you are really the one who asked to be signed up for the list in question. If you include the word 'help' in the body of an email to the above address, it will also send back an information file on how to subscribe/unsubscribe, get past issues of CIAC bulletins via email, etc. PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE, ESnet, and NIH computing communities receive CIAC bulletins. If you are not part of these communities, please contact your agency's response team to report incidents. Your agency's team will coordinate with CIAC. The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is a world-wide organization. A list of FIRST member organizations and their constituencies can be obtained via WWW at http://www.first.org/. 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. LAST 10 CIAC BULLETINS ISSUED (Previous bulletins available from CIAC) I-079: IBM AIX "sdrd" daemon Vulnerability I-080: Microsoft Exchange Denial of Service Attacks I-081: HP-UX & MPEix Predictive Vulnerability I-082: HP-UX Netscape Servers Vulnerability I-083: Eudora Pro E-Mail Attachment Vulnerability I-084: Cisco IOS Remote Router Crash I-085: Microsoft IE Upgrade Trojan Horse Program I-086: Cisco CRM Temporary File Vulnerability I-087: Microsoft PPTP Security Vulnerabilities I-088: NFS clients rpc.pcnfsd Vulnerability -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.0 Business Edition iQCVAwUBNexbz7nzJzdsy3QZAQHNqAP8DrCU8gMb1SKCKSGLdAPrlLunu3OJb+eb MEXsP1+6OJ4eizsnorYzFNa2Zy84V3PIoighYyEwLKFGQoBhdcsohVzWEZ3oMU1C HVIPqykTkFjhpN1E5l+tQrj3+X8sh875NLPl93tI+Q7H+N20Bebk8WTNVtEcU+JI cL5vcbtz10s= =rjTZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----