Bugtraq mailing list archives

Re: Bug found in ht://Dig htsearch CGI


From: Geoff Hutchison <ghutchis () wso williams edu>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 15:46:40 -0500

* Name: ht://Dig (htsearch CGI)

* Versions affected: 3.1.0b2 and more recent, including 3.1.5 and 3.2.0b3

* Vulnerability:   (Potential remote exposure. Denial of Service.)

* Details:
The htsearch CGI runs as both the CGI and as a command-line program. The command-line program accepts the -c [filename] to read in an alternate configuration file. On the other hand, no filtering is done to stop the CGI program from taking command-line arguments, so a remote user can force the CGI to stall until it times out (resulting in a DOS) or read in a different configuration file.

For a remote exposure, a specified configuration file would need to be readable via the webserver UID, e.g. via anonymous FTP with upload enabled or samba world-readable log files are the possible targets) to potentially retrieve files readable by the webserver UID.
e.g.
nothing_found_file: /path/to/the/file/we/steal

* Potential exploit:
http://your.host/cgi-bin/htsearch?-c/dev/zero
http://your.host/cgi-bin/htsearch?-c/path/to/my.file

* Fix:
Upgrade to current prerelease versions of 3.1.6 or 3.2.0b4, or apply attached patches.

Prerelease versions are available from <http://www.htdig.org/files/snapshots/>

Attachment: %htsearch-3.1.x.patch
Description:

Attachment: htsearch-3.1.x.patch
Description:

Attachment: %htsearch-3.2.x.patch
Description:

Attachment: htsearch-3.2.x.patch
Description:


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