Shana Informed 3.05 information disclosure

["sullo" <sullo () cirt net>]

Shana Informed v3.05 stores random data in clear text 
http://www.cirt.net/advisories/shana.shtml

Product Description:
Shana Corporation provides eForm solutions and is the developer of Informed. 
Their solution is used by more than two million people around the world. 
Shana's Informed has been chosen by a wide range of organizations in more 
than 65 countries worldwide. Shana's customer base spans many industries, 
notably the Aerospace and Digital Government sectors. Shana has strategic 
technology partnerships with a number of companies, including FileNET 
Corporation and Entrust Technologies. Other partners include Apple Computer, 
EDS, Microsoft, NCR, Oracle, and Sierra. 

Event Description:
Shana's Informed product accesses information from disk and pads it into the 
Informed document. When an Informed document is opened with a hex editor or 
Microsoft's Wordpad sensitive information may be stored in the clear at the very 
bottom of the file. The information stored in the clear has been identified to have 
come from other documents on a user's workstation has well as clear-text data 
from the actual Informed file as well.

Risk Explanation: 
The Informed files may contain sensitive personal or corporate information that 
can be viewed by anyone has access to the encrypted file.

Applications Affected:
Informed Filler v3.05
Informed Designer v3.05.

Solution:
Upgrade to Shana's Informed Filler and Informed Designer release 4.0.

Timeline: 
*       The problem was reported to Shana via E-Mail on Saturday, June 29th 2002 
4:20pm. 
*       A response from Shana was received on July 1st explaining that the 
information had been passed on to the development team for evaluation. 
*       A follow-up was sent to Shana via E-Mail on Sunday, July 21st 2002 12:38pm 
again requesting timeframes for addressing the security issue. 
*       A response acknowling the problema and detailing a fix was received on 
Tuesday, July 23 2002 12:55pm. 

Vendor Status:
Response: "Thank-you for bringing this issue to our attention. We have fixed the 
issue in our newest release 4.0. Some file space allocation growth functions 
were not "zeroing" out new disc space as the file grew. Unused blocks were 
being captured into the form data, along with any data that may have resided on 
that location of the drive. The complete file growth areas are now made null to 
avoid any unwanted data from being captured. It may be worth noting that this 
does not occur in Windows XP, as the operating system takes better care of this 
on its own."

Contacts:
zel () cirt net*


*(note that this message was sent on behalf of zel () cirt net)