Vulnerability Development mailing list archives

Re: Norton antivirus fails to scan files


From: BoneMachine <BoneMachine () sdf lonestar org>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 19:55:01 +0200

Actually, I've removed all other users from the ACL that have no business to my files. So there are no explicit denies.

NAV is started as system account as defined in control panel->services->startup

I have not yet found the time to look at logs so I cannot that the read fail occurs.

It would be a method for a virus to keep itself rrom being scanned though.

greetings 
Bone Machine

--
 
 "Hey! been trying to meet you" - The Pixies
 
--
 
 

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002 18:06:04 -0700
garberoa () WellsFargo COM wrote:

BoneMachine,

What do you mean by "a file has no Administrator read privileges"? Is the
principal/group simply not present in the ACL for the object, or is an
explicit deny set? Also, are you referring to the local administrators
group, or the local administrator account (RID 500)? It matters. If, for
instance, you had NAV running as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM and it attempted to
open the file (ACLed with "deny read" set for the Local Administrators
group) for a read operation, it will fail. A glance at the group membership
for NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM on an NT 4.0 or Win2k box reveals why:

[User]     = "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM"  S-1-5-18

[Group  1] = "BUILTIN\Administrators"  S-1-5-32-544
[Group  2] = "Everyone"  S-1-1-0
[Group  3] = "NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users"  S-1-5-11

If an explicit deny is set for the local admins group (that NT
AUTHORITY\SYSTEM) is a member of, then the operation will fail. See attached
zip archive for neato-keen screen shots of the read fail in action. If this
is the problem you are encountering, which I suspect it is, you should be
seeing audit failures in the security log that confirm this (you are
auditing, aren't you?).

It's a common misconception that the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM account doesn't
have to play by the same rules as any other account when it comes to
accessing ACLed resources. You can set explicit deny ACLs for the SYSTEM
account on just about anything (File System objects, registry keys, system
objects... get used to looking at blue screens with white letters if you
decide to be silly with this functionality).


HTH, 

Andrew Garberoglio, MCSE, CISSP
Wells Fargo Services, Internet Technology Services

"Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not
eff it after all"
-Douglas Adams

 <<cant_scan_me.zip>> 

-----Original Message-----
From: BoneMachine [mailto:bonemach () sdf lonestar org]
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 4:47 AM
To: vuln-dev () securityfocus com
Subject: Norton antivirus fails to scan files


I have a problem with NAV corporate edition 7.6. When a file has no
Administrator read privileges assigned on a Windows 2000 or Windows NT host,
NAV fails to scan the file for viruses.
This is a bit odd because the NAV client runs with system privileges and
according to my NT knowledge this should be enough to read those files.

I've searched on the Symantec knowledge base and all I found was this:
Error: "Application Log is Full" upon startup of Norton AntiVirus Corporate
Edition
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-security.nsf/552ba2f7636bedf0882568
18006f78bf/304b3eb399b43ab588256a780056e5d7?

I have also used the webform to post this issue to symantec about two months
ago, but I had no response

Also it is not possible to use an other account than administrator as the
'scan' account. So it is impossible to protect documents from accidental
access by removing administrator privileges from a file (yes, I know that
administrators can add themselfs to the ACL of a file, but that does require
an extra action thus excluding accidental access)

My thoughts are that there are two vulnerabilities to this behavior of NAV
1. A virus can protect itself from being scanned by removing administrator
read privileges from itself and its copies.
2. The administrator needs read privileges on all files, files therefore
cannot be protected from accidental access by administrators.

Does anyone have the same experience ? 
Does anyone know of a virus that uses this technique to hide ?

greetings
Bone Machine

--

"Hey! been trying to meet you" - The Pixies

--




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