Snort no fort, could be mugged by bug

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9011574

By Gregg Keizer
February 20, 2007
Computerworld

A flaw in Snort, the popular open-source intrusion detection system, 
could be used by attackers to run malicious code on vulnerable machines, 
several security organizations reported yesterday.

The stack buffer overflow bug is in the Snort (or Sourcefire) DCE/RPC 
preprocessor, said Neel Mehta, a member of IBM's Internet Security 
Systems X-Force research team. Mehta discovered the vulnerability, which 
could result in compromised or hijacked computers.

Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia rated the threat as "highly 
critical," the second-most-serious ranking in its 1-through-5 scoring 
system.

Several versions of Snort, which is the foundation of Sourcefire's 
security appliance line, are at risk, according to other advisories 
posted by US-CERT [1] and the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center. 
The vulnerable versions include Snort 2.6.1, 2.6.1.1, 2.6.1.2, and 2.7.0 
Beta 1.

Sourcefire urged users [2] of Snort 2.6.1.x to update to Version 2.6.1.3 
"immediately"; if upgrading isn't feasible, the DCE/RPC preprocessor 
should be disabled. Instructions for disabling the preprocessor are 
available online [3].

No working exploit for the vulnerability has been spotted yet, 
Sourcefire said.

[1] http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA07-050A.html
[2] http://www.snort.org/docs/advisory-2007-02-19.html
[3] http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=2280


______________________________________
Subscribe to the InfoSec News RSS Feed
http://www.infosecnews.org/isn.rss