Four Critical Vulnerabilities Involving Symantec

[Rodney Petersen <rpetersen () EDUCAUSE EDU>]

The following information has been provided to me regarding Symantec
vulnerabilities reported last week.
 
Rodney Petersen
Security Task Force Coordinator, EDUCAUSE
 

SYMANTEC'S EXTERNAL STATEMENT as of MAY 13, 2004: 
"In mid-April, eEye Digital reported four product vulnerabilities to
Symantec.  The vulnerabilities affected consumer and corporate client
firewall products and Norton AntiSpam 2004.  Fixes to the four
vulnerabilities have been issued through Symantec LiveUpdate and
technical support channels.  To date, Symantec has not had any reports
of any related exploit of the vulnerabilities.   Three of the
vulnerabilities, if exploited, could potentially allow remote access to
the targeted system.  The fourth vulnerability, if exploited, could
potentially cause a denial of service.   Symantec's security advisory
was posted on May 12, 2004, and can be found at
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2004.05.1
2.html."

  _____  

  
Tom Resau        
PR Manager, Public Sector 
Symantec Corporation 
Office:         703-668-8743 
Interoffice:    6 [703] 8743 
Fax:    703-668-8703 
Email:  thomas_resau () symantec com <mailto:thomas_resau () symantec com>  
www.symantec.com <http://www.symantec.com/> 
 
 

MAY 13, 2004 (TECHWORLD.COM) <HTTP://www.techworld.com/>  - Almost the
entire range of Symantec Corp. security software, from Norton Internet
Security through to the Symantec Firewall, requires urgent updates, the
company has warned, after four critical vulnerabilities were found by
security company eEye Digital Security Inc.
<http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/index.html>  

One of the holes remains open even with all ports filtered and intrusion
rules set thanks to a separate design flaw, eEye has warned. This makes
it an almost certain target for worm writers, one of which -- if history
is any indication -- may be put out on the Internet within 24 hours. 

Symantec was informed of the holes on April 19, and provided patches for
them today. The patches should be installed as part of the Live Update
feature in most packages, but some will require the manual download and
installation of patches, and those that have automatic updating switched
off will need to run Live Update as soon as possible. 

EEye explains in its advisories that the holes, all of which are within
the symdns.sys driver, allow system access, the opportunity to create a
denial-of-service attack and -- most serious -- an open door to a worm. 

In connection with one vulnerability, eEye warned: "With the ability to
freely execute code at the Ring 0 privilege level, there are literally
no boundaries for an attacker. It should also be noted, that due to a
separate design flaw in the firewalls handling of incoming packets, this
attack can be successfully performed with all ports filtered, and all
intrusion rules set." 

Security company Secunia <http://secunia.com/>  has warned that the last
time such a hole appeared -- in ISS's security software, affecting how
it handled ICQ traffic -- a worm, Witty, appeared just a day after the
exploit was made public. 

Symantec has more detail on the flaws with links to patches on its Web
site <http://www.symantec.com/downloads/> . 









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