-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- __________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN Eudora Pro E-Mail Attachments Vulnerability August 11, 1998 22:00 GMT Number I-083 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: A vulnerability exists which allows a malicious e-mail message to possibly execute an attachment by hiding the name of the attachment within a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). If a user clicks on the URL the attachment could automatically execute. PLATFORM: Qualcomm's Eudora Pro 4.0 and 4.0.1 running on any Microsoft Windows platform. DAMAGE: If exploited, this vulnerability could allow a rogue e-mail attachment to execute and do anything from reformatting the users hard drive to infecting the computer with a virus. SOLUTION: Apply patch from Qualcomm Inc. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY Risk is high. While we have not yet heard of anyone exploiting ASSESSMENT: this vulnerability for malicious reasons, the ease in which it may be exploited makes this a very serious problem. ______________________________________________________________________________ Qualcomm, Inc. announced on August 7, 1998, that a security vulnerability has been discovered in their popular e-mail program Eudora Pro. The vulnerability is limited to Eudora Pro versions 4.0 and 4.0.1 running on the Microsoft Windows platform. This vulnerability does not affect Eudora Lite, previous Eudora Pro versions running on the Microsoft Windows platform, or Eudora versions running on the Macintosh platform. This vulnerability has no connection to the current problems with the MIME headers that have been found in Microsoft's Outlook 98 and Outlook Express and Netscape's Communicator 4.0. For more information on the MIME Name Vulnerability you can review CIAC's bulletin I-077A. The vulnerability that was discovered in Eudora Pro 4.0 and 4.0.1 is fairly easy to exploit. The vulnerability allows someone to send hostile Java applets, executable programs, or scripts in an e-mail message and hide the name of the attachment as a URL. A user who clicks on the URL would launch and run the e-mail attachment allowing the rogue attachment to execute. Qualcomm, Inc. has issued a patch for Eudora Pro 4.0 and 4.0.1 to fix this problem at http://eudora.qualcomm.com/pro_email/updaters.html. You can also temporary protect yourself by turning off the Microsoft viewer from within Eudora. To do this, follow these steps: 1. In Eudora, go to the Tools menu and choose "Options". 2. On the left-hand side of the options window, select "Viewing Mail". 3. On the right hand side of the options window, make sure the box next to "USE" Microsoft's viewer" is UNCHECKED. 4. Click on "OK" on the bottom of the window. If you disable the Microsoft viewer feature you will not be able to read HTML in an e-mail message. CIAC has not received any reports of this vulnerability being exploited but the ease of exploiting this problem does not require any type of sophistication. CIAC highly recommends that anyone running Qualcomm's Eudora Pro on the Microsoft Windows platform immediately apply the patch supplied by Qualcomm to fix this problem. 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. CIAC can be contacted at: Voice: +1 925-422-8193 FAX: +1 925-423-8002 STU-III: +1 925-423-2604 E-mail: ciac@llnl.gov For emergencies and off-hour assistance, DOE, DOE contractor sites, and the NIH may contact CIAC 24-hours a day. During off hours (5PM - 8AM PST), call the CIAC voice number 925-422-8193 and leave a message, or call 800-759-7243 (800-SKY-PAGE) to send a Sky Page. CIAC has two Sky Page PIN numbers, the primary PIN number, 8550070, is for the CIAC duty person, and the secondary PIN number, 8550074 is for the CIAC Project Leader. Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive. World Wide Web: http://www.ciac.org/ (or http://ciac.llnl.gov -- they're the same machine) Anonymous FTP: ftp.ciac.org (or ciac.llnl.gov -- they're the same machine) Modem access: +1 (925) 423-4753 (28.8K baud) +1 (925) 423-3331 (28.8K baud) CIAC has several self-subscribing mailing lists for electronic publications: 1. 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-073: multiscan ('mscan') Tool I-074: Buffer Overflow in Some Implementations of IMAP Servers I-075: Microsoft Office 98 Security Vulnerability I-076: SGI IRIX ioconfig(1M) and disk_bandwidth(1M) Vulnerability I-077: Mime Name Vulnerability in Outlook and Messenger I-078: HP-UX ftp Security Vulnerability 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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.0 Business Edition iQCVAwUBNdGp5bnzJzdsy3QZAQHvFgP/Vxka2QbOOc4ILIixUgvWWwS17FirtPFj /3950frEim+o8r5f8ttqceryivZVn7Dlps9TQLVAVEmGEHK6uMQxTJxUB+lFsTNA RFF950TyW1WWpDaTk/KYib+FPZB1aNdNVMl7+peM5pFc670/+kaGBdhXg0w2WvUt 9jg8WfB17Hc= =/8DR -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----