HEWLETT-PACKARD SECURITY ADVISORY: #00041, 21 November 1996

[aleph1 () DFW NET (Aleph One)]

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HEWLETT-PACKARD SECURITY ADVISORY: #00041, 21 November 1996
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The information in the following Security Advisory should be acted upon
as soon as possible.  Hewlett Packard will not be liable for any
consequences to any customer resulting from customer's failure to fully
implement instructions in this Security Advisory as soon as possible.

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PROBLEM:  Use of user or group id's greater than 60000

PLATFORM: HP 9000 series 700/800 systems running version 10.20

DAMAGE:   Increase in capability and unauthorized access

SOLUTION: Until further notice do not use any uid's or gid's greater
          than 60000.  Modify all such accounts by assigning them uid's
          and gid's less than 60000.

AVAILABILITY: The availability of patches or procedures to allow the safe
          use of large user and group id's will be announced in a future
          Security Bulletin.
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I.
   A. Background
      Large user and group id's are a new feature of HP-UX revision 10.20.

   B. Fixing the problem
      Do not use large user and group id's.

   C. Recommended solution
      Use SAM to change all accounts that have large user or group id's.

      For all groups with gid's greater than 60000:

       Select the Accounts for Users and Groups...Users menu in SAM.
       Modify the accounts in the group with the large group ids to use
       a group with an id less than 60000.

       Select the Accounts for Users and Groups...Groups menu in SAM
       and remove the group with the large gid.

      For all accounts with uid's greater than 60000:

       Select the Accounts for Users and Groups...Users menu in SAM.
       Modify all accounts with large uid's by assigning those accounts
       a uid less than 60000.


   D. Impact of the patch
      No patch is available at this time.


   E. To subscribe to automatically receive future NEW HP Security
      Bulletins from the HP SupportLine Digest service via electronic
      mail, do the following:

      1)  From your Web browser, access the URL:

      http://us-support.external.hp.com (US,Canada, Asia-Pacific, and
      Latin-America)

      http://europe-support.external.hp.com  (Europe)

      2)  On the HP Electronic Support Center main screen, select the
      hyperlink "Support Information Digests".

      3)  On the "Welcome to HP's Support Information Digests"
screen,      under the heading "Register Now", select the
appropriate hyperlink
      "Americas and Asia-Pacific", or "Europe".

      4)  On the "New User Registration" screen, fill in the
fields for
      the User Information and Password and then select the button
      labeled "Submit New User".

      5)  On the "User ID Assigned" screen, select the hyperlink
      "Support Information Digests".

      **Note what your assigned user ID and password are for future
        reference.

      6)  You should now be on the "HP Support Information Digests
Main"
      screen.  You might want to verify that your email address is
      correct as displayed on the screen.  From this screen, you may
      also view/subscribe to the digests, including the security bulletins
      digest.


   F. To report new security vulnerabilities, send email to

          security-alert () hp com

      Please encrypt any exploit information using the security-alert
      PGP key, available from your local key server, or by sending a
      message with a -subject- (not body) of 'get key' (no quotes) to
      security-alert () hp com.


     Permission is granted for copying and circulating this Advisory to
     Hewlett-Packard (HP) customers (or the Internet community) for the
     purpose of alerting them to problems, if and only if, the Advisory is
     not edited or changed in any way, is attributed to HP, and provided
     such reproduction and/or distribution is performed for non-commercial
     purposes.

     Any other use of this information is prohibited. HP is not liable
     for any misuse of this information by any third party.
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Aleph One / aleph1 () dfw net
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