__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN AIX "paginit" Command Vulnerability [MSS-OAR-E01-2004:2060.1] December 21, 2004 20:00 GMT Number P-077 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: A buffer overflow vulnerability in paginit command was found. This fileset ships as part of the bos.rte.security fileset and is installed as part of the Base Operating System Installation. PLATFORM: AIX 5.2 and 5.3 DAMAGE: Any local user can exploit this buffer overflow vulnerability to gain root privileges. SOLUTION: Apply the available updates or workaround. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is MEDIUM. A local user can gain root privileges. ASSESSMENT: Exploits for this vulnerability are publicly available. ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/p-077.shtml ORIGINAL BULLETIN: http://www-1.ibm.com/services/continuity/recover1.nsf/mss/ MSS-OAR-E01-2004.2060.1 ______________________________________________________________________________ [***** Start MSS-OAR-E01-2004:2060.1 *****] IBM SECURITY ADVISORY First Issued: Mon Dec 20 12:57:11 CST 2004 =========================================================================== VULNERABILITY SUMMARY VULNERABILITY: Buffer overflow vulnerability in paginit command allows local users to gain root privileges. PLATFORMS: AIX 5.2 and 5.3. SOLUTION: Apply the workaround or APARs as described below. THREAT: A local user can gain root privileges. CERT VU Number: N/A CVE Number: N/A =========================================================================== DETAILED INFORMATION I. Description =============== A vulnerability was discovered in the paginit command that allows a local user to gain root privileges. Exploits for this vulnerability are publicly available. The command affected by this issue ships as part of the bos.rte.security fileset. This fileset is installed as part of the Base Operating System Installation. II. Impact ========== Any local user can exploit this buffer overflow vulnerability to gain root privileges. III. Solutions =============== A. Official Fix IBM provides the following fixes: APAR number for AIX 5.2.0: IY64522 (available) APAR number for AIX 5.3.0: IY64312 (available) NOTE: Affected customers are urged to upgrade to 5.2.0 or 5.3.0 at the latest maintenance level. Although a related AIX 5.1 APAR is available, this issue is not exploitable on AIX 5.1 since the paginit command is not available on 5.1. B. Workaround Setting the file mode bits to 500 will allow only the root user to execute the paginit command. This can be done by executing the following command as root: # chmod 500 /usr/bin/paginit Verify that the file mode bits have been changed to 500: # ls -la /usr/bin/paginit - - -r-x------ 1 root security 7354 2002-09-15 20:39 /usr/bin/paginit IV. Obtaining Fixes =================== AIX Version 5 APARs can be downloaded from the eServer pSeries Fix Central web site: http://www-912.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/fcgui.jsp Security related Emergency Fixes can be downloaded from: ftp://aix.software.ibm.com/aix/efixes/security V. Contact Information ======================= If you would like to receive AIX Security Advisories via email, please visit: https://techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/pseries.subscriptionSvcs Comments regarding the content of this announcement can be directed to: security-alert@austin.ibm.com To request the PGP public key that can be used to communicate securely with the AIX Security Team send email to security-alert@austin.ibm.com with a subject of "get key". The key can also be downloaded from a PGP Public Key Server. The key id is 0x9391C1F2. Please contact your local IBM AIX support center for any assistance. eServer is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. IBM, AIX and pSeries are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders. [***** End MSS-OAR-E01-2004:2060.1 *****] _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of IBM Global Services MSS 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. 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