nanog mailing list archives

Re: Symantec AV may execute viruses


From: Dragos Ruiu <dr () kyx net>
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 12:46:13 -0800


On February 10, 2005 12:01 pm, Dragos Ruiu wrote:
On February 10, 2005 10:29 am, Paul G wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Wheeler" <jwheeler () usip org>
To: "Colin Johnston" <colinj () mx5 org uk>
Cc: <nanog () merit edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: Symantec AV may execute viruses

Also, it doesn't appear that this issue effects the Mac software (at
least, I didn't see the Mac products in the Symantec vulnerability
list), only Windows products.

if this is a heap overflow and if osx uses a bsd-derived libc (with phy
malloc implementation), the vulnerability would not be exploitable. this
seems like a probable explanation.

Neil Mehta & Alex Wheeler from ISS who identified this and a number
of other AV issues will be doing a presentation on it entitled, "Owning
Antii-Virus"  at CanSecWest.

P.s. To not pick on any one vendor exclusively, it's not just Symantec 
that has issues... I know that an F-Secure advisory has now been 
released too... and who knows, as an educated guess, I'd bet 
there probably will be others coming... ;-)   Allocating some IT
schedule to AV updates/verification seems prudent.

-- 
World Security Pros. Cutting Edge Training, Tools, and Techniques
Vancouver, Canada       May 4-6 2005  http://cansecwest.com
pgpkey http://dragos.com/ kyxpgp


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