SGI locale vulnerability

[SGI Security Coordinator <agent99 () CSD SGI COM>]

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______________________________________________________________________________
                          SGI Security Advisory

        Title:   locale vulnerability
        Title:   CAN-2000-0844
        Number:  20000901-01-P
        Date:    December 27, 2000
______________________________________________________________________________

SGI provides this information freely to the SGI user community for its
consideration, interpretation, implementation and use.   SGI recommends
that this information be acted upon as soon as possible.

SGI provides the information in this Security Advisory on an "AS-IS" basis
only, and disclaims all warranties with respect thereto, express, implied
or otherwise, including, without limitation, any warranty of merchantability
or fitness for a particular purpose.  In no event shall SGI be liable for
any loss of profits, loss of business, loss of data or for any indirect,
special, exemplary, incidental or consequential damages of any kind arising
from your use of, failure to use or improper use of any of the instructions
or information in this Security Advisory.
______________________________________________________________________________


- -----------------------
- --- Issue Specifics ---
- -----------------------

The locale subsystem is used to provide internationalization support.

A format string vulnerability  was reported by Ivan Arce of CORE SDI S.A.
on BUGTRAQ http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/1634

SGI has investigated the issue and recommends the following steps for
neutralizing the exposure.  It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that these measures
be implemented on ALL vulnerable SGI systems.  This issue has been
corrected in IRIX 6.5.10.


- --------------
- --- Impact ---
- --------------

The locale subsystem is installed by default on IRIX.

A local user account on the vulnerable system is required in order to
exploit the locale subsystem.

The exploitable format string buffer overflow vulnerability can lead to
a root compromise.

This locale vulnerability was reported by Ivan Arce of CORE SDI S.A.
on BUGTRAQ http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/1634

It was assigned CAN-2000-0844 by the CVE:
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2000-0844

This locale vulnerability has been publicly discussed in Usenet newsgroups
and mailing lists.


- --------------------------
- --- Temporary Solution ---
- --------------------------

Unfortunately, there are no immediate or temporary workarounds for
this issue.  This issue can only be addressed with the installation
of IRIX 6.5.10 overlay on top of IRIX 6.5.


- ----------------
- --- Solution ---
- ----------------

   OS Version     Vulnerable?     Patch #      Other Actions
   ----------     -----------     -------      -------------

   IRIX 3.x         unknown                    Note 1 (retired)
   IRIX 4.x         unknown                    Note 1 (retired)
   IRIX 5.x         unknown                    Note 1 (retired)
   IRIX 6.0.x       unknown                    Note 1 (retired)
   IRIX 6.1         unknown                    Note 1 (retired)
   IRIX 6.2         unknown                    Note 1 (retired)
   IRIX 6.3         unknown                    Note 1 (retired)
   IRIX 6.4         unknown                    Note 1 (retired)

   IRIX 6.5          yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.1        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.2        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.3        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.4        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.5        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.6        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.7        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.8        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.9        yes                       Note 2
   IRIX 6.5.10       no                        Note 3


   NOTES

     1) This version of the IRIX operating has been retired.
        Upgrade to an actively supported IRIX operating system.
        See http://support.sgi.com/irix/news/index.html#policy
        for more information.

     2) This version of the IRIX operating system is in maintenance mode.
        Upgrade to an actively supported IRIX operating system.
        See http://support.sgi.com/irix/news/index.html#policy
        for more information.

     3) If you have not received an IRIX 6.5.10 Overlay CD for IRIX 6.5,
        contact your SGI Support Provider or download the IRIX 6.5.10
        Maintenance Release Stream from the following URL:
        http://support.sgi.com/colls/patches/tools/relstream/index.html


IRIX 6.5.X Releases Streams are released every quarter.

IRIX 6.5 Maintenance Release Streams can be found at:
http://support.sgi.com/colls/patches/tools/relstream/index.html

SGI Security Advisories can be found at:
http://www.sgi.com/support/security/ and
ftp://patches.sgi.com/support/free/security/advisories/

SGI Security Patches can be found at:
http://www.sgi.com/support/security/ and
ftp://patches.sgi.com/support/free/security/patches/

SGI patches for IRIX can be found at the following patch servers:
http://support.sgi.com/irix/ and ftp://patches.sgi.com/

SGI freeware updates for IRIX can be found at:
http://freeware.sgi.com/

SGI fixes for SGI open sourced code can be found on:
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/

SGI patches and RPMs for Linux can be found at:
http://support.sgi.com/linux/ and click on patches link and
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/sgilinux-combined/download/security-fixes/

SGI patches for Windows NT or 2000 can be found at:
http://support.sgi.com/nt/

IRIX 5.2-6.4 Recommended/Required Patch Sets can be found at:
http://support.sgi.com/irix/ and ftp://patches.sgi.com/support/patchset/

The primary SGI anonymous FTP site for security advisories and patches
is patches.sgi.com (216.32.174.211).  Security advisories and patches
are located under the URL ftp://patches.sgi.com/support/free/security/

For security and patch management reasons, ftp.sgi.com (mirrors
patches.sgi.com security FTP repository) lags behind and does not
do a real-time update.

- ------------------------
- --- Acknowledgments ----
- ------------------------

SGI wishes to thank the users of the Internet Community at large for
their assistance in this matter.


- -----------------------------------------
- --- SGI Security Information/Contacts ---
- -----------------------------------------

If there are questions about this document, email can be sent to
cse-security-alert () sgi com.

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______________________________________________________________________________
      This information is provided freely to all interested parties
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