Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 12:16:42 +1000
From: NetBSD Security Officer <security-officer@netbsd.org.>
To: [email protected]Subject: NetBSD Security Advisory 2002-011: Sun RPC XDR decoder contains buffer overflow
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NetBSD Security Advisory 2002-011
Topic: Sun RPC XDR decoder contains buffer overflow
Version: NetBSD-current: source prior to August 1, 2002
NetBSD-1.6 beta: affected
NetBSD-1.5.3: affected
NetBSD-1.5.2: affected
NetBSD-1.5.1: affected
NetBSD-1.5: affected
NetBSD-1.4.*: affected
severity: Possible remote root compromise if RPC services
are enabled
Fixed: NetBSD-current: August 1, 2002
NetBSD-1.6 branch: August 2, 2002 (1.6 includes the fix)
NetBSD-1.5 branch: August 1, 2002
NetBSD-1.4 branch: not yet
Abstract
========
Integer overflows exist in the RPC code in libc. These cause a buffer to
be mistakenly allocated too small, and then overflown.
The Automounter amd(8) and its query tool amq(8), and the rusers(1)
client binary use the flawed code in a way which could be exploitable.
Other uses of the RPC functions have been examined and are believed to
not be exploitable.
No RPC-based services are enabled by default.
Technical Details
=================
Sun RPC is a remote procedure call framework which allows clients
to invoke procedures in a server process over a network somewhat
transparently. XDR is a mechanism for encoding data structures for
use with RPC. NFS, NIS, and many other network services are built
upon Sun RPC.
The NetBSD C runtime library (libc) contains an XDR encoder/decoder
derived from Sun's RPC implementation.
Any application using Sun RPC may be vulnerable to a heap buffer
overflow. Depending upon the application, this vulnerability may be
exploitable and lead to arbitrary code execution.
An error in the calculation of memory needed for unpacking arrays in
the XDR decoder can result in a heap buffer overflow.
Though no exploits are known to exist currently, RPC-based services
often run as the superuser, and the vulnerability in amd(8) could be
exploitable.
Again, no RPC-based services are enabled by default.
Solutions and Workarounds
The recent NetBSD 1.6 release is not vulnerable to this issue. A full
upgrade to NetBSD 1.6 is the recommended resolution for all users able
to do so. Many security-related improvements have been made, and
indeed this release has been delayed several times in order to include
fixes for a number of recent issues.
If you do not run any of the affected RPC services (amd/amq/rusers)
your system is not affected. However, we suggest you upgrade your
system to avoid running vulnerable RPC code by mistake.
The following instructions describe how to upgrade your libc (which
includes RPC code) by updating your source tree and rebuilding and
installing a new version of libc.
Note that if you have any statically-linked binaries that uses RPC,
you need to recompile them.
* NetBSD-current:
Systems running NetBSD-current dated from before 2002-08-01
should be upgraded to NetBSD-current dated 2002-08-01 or later.
The following directories need to be updated from the
netbsd-current CVS branch (aka HEAD):
lib/libc/rpc
To update from CVS, re-build, and re-install libc:
# cd src
# cvs update -d -P lib/libc/rpc
# cd lib/libc
# make cleandir dependall
# make install
* NetBSD 1.6 beta:
Systems running NetBSD 1.6 BETAs and Release Candidates should
be upgraded to the NetBSD 1.6 release.
If a source-based point upgrade is required, sources from the
NetBSD 1.6 branch dated 2002-08-02 or later should be used.
The following directories need to be updated from the
netbsd-1-6 CVS branch:
lib/libc/rpc
To update from CVS, re-build, and re-install libc:
# cd src
# cvs update -d -P -r netbsd-1-6 lib/libc/rpc
# cd lib/libc
# make cleandir dependall
# make install
* NetBSD 1.5, 1.5.1, 1.5.2, 1.5.3:
Systems running NetBSD-1.5 branch dated from before 2002-08-02
should be upgraded to NetBSD-1.5 branch dated 2002-08-02 or later.
The following directories need to be updated from the
netbsd-1-5 CVS branch:
lib/libc/rpc
To update from CVS, re-build, and re-install libc:
# cd src
# cvs update -d -P -r netbsd-1-5 lib/libc/rpc
# cd lib/libc
# make cleandir dependall
# make install
* NetBSD 1.4, 1.4.1, 1.4.2, 1.4.3:
The advisory will be updated to include instructions to remedy
this problem for systems running the NetBSD-1.4 branch.
Thanks To
=========
CERT for notification.
Charles Hannum for scope analysis and commentary.
FreeBSD security-officers. Parts of the advisory text are based on
the FreeBSD advisory.
The NetBSD Release Engineering teams, for great patience and
assistance in dealing with repeated security issues discovered
recently.
Revision History
================
2002-08-01 Initial release
2002-08-02 1.5/1.6 branch info
2002-09-16 Re-release with updated information
More Information
================
An up-to-date PGP signed copy of this release will be maintained at
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/security/advisories/NetBSD-SA2002-011.txt.asc
Information about NetBSD and NetBSD security can be found at
http://www.NetBSD.ORG/ and http://www.NetBSD.ORG/Security/.
Copyright 2002, The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
$NetBSD: NetBSD-SA2002-011.txt,v 1.13 2002/09/16 05:17:55 dan Exp $
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