__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN Apple Remote Desktop Vulnerability [Apple Security Update 2004-10-27] October 28, 2004 18:00 GMT Number P-024 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: Apple Remote Desktop contains a vulnerability that may allow a user to gain root privileges. Apple Remote Desktop allows you to distribute software, remotely control and configure systems, offer real-time online help to end users, and create detailed software and hardware reports on Mac OS X computers. PLATFORM: Apple Remote Desktop Client with Mac OS X 10.3.x This issue does not affect systems prior to Mac OS X 10.3. DAMAGE: An attacker with access to the Apple Remote Desktop Administrator application may launch a GUI application on a client and run it as root behind the loginwindow of the client. The following conditions must be met in order to exploit this vulnerability: -Apple Remote Desktop client installed -A user on the client system has been enabled with the Open user is known -Fast user switching has been enabled -A user is logged in, and loginwindow is active via Fast User Switching SOLUTION: Install the available security update. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is LOW. If conditions are met, an attacker may gain ASSESSMENT: root privileges. This vulnerability is difficult to exploit. Apple Remote Desktop is not installed by default, nor is fast user switching enabled. ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/p-024.shtml ORIGINAL BULLETIN: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate 20041027ard.html CVE/CAN: http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2004-0962 ______________________________________________________________________________ Visit Apple's Website directly for their published information: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798 _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Apple 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. CIAC can be contacted at: Voice: +1 925-422-8193 (7x24) FAX: +1 925-423-8002 STU-III: +1 925-423-2604 E-mail: ciac@ciac.org Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive. World Wide Web: http://www.ciac.org/ Anonymous FTP: ftp.ciac.org 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) P-014: CUPS Information Leak P-015: Libtiff Vulnerabilities P-016: Sun FTP Daemon of Heimdal is Vulnerable to Race Conditions P-017: Sun Security Vulnerability When Using LDAP in Conjunction with RBAC P-018: Red Hat Update MySQL Packages Fix Security Issues and Bugs P-019: Red Hat Updated CUPS Packages Fix Security Issues P-020: VERITAS NetBackup (tm) Java GUI Vulnerability P-021: HP Serviceguard Vulnerability P-022: QuickTime for Windows Vulnerability P-023: RealPlayer Vulnerability