_____________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | / \ / \___ __|__ /___\ \___ _____________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN SunOS/Solbourne loadmodule and modload Vulnerability December 15, 1993 1200 PST Number E-05 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: Security vulnerability in loadmodule and modload. PLATFORM: OpenWindows 3.0 under SunOS 4.1.x on sun4 and Solbourne systems. DAMAGE: Local users may gain root level access to the system. SOLUTION: Apply patches to SunOS systems or implement workaround on Solbourne machines. ______________________________________________________________________________ Critical Information about the loadmodule and modload Vulnerability CIAC has received information from Sun Microsystems and Solbourne regarding a security vulnerability in the /usr/etc/modload and $OPENWINHOME/bin/loadmodule utilities that allows local users to execute commands as root. This vulnerability affects systems with OpenWindows 3.0 installed under SunOS 4.1.x on sun4 and Solbourne architectures. It does not affect Solaris 2.x systems, sun3 architectures, or other versions of OpenWindows. Sun Microsystems has released patched versions of the loadmodule and modload utilities: /bin/sum Utility Patch ID Filename Checksum ---------- --------- --------------- -------- loadmodule 100448-02 100448-02.tar.Z 19410 5 modload 101200-02 101200-02.tar.Z 41677 28 Individuals with Sun support contracts may obtain these patches from their local Sun Answer Center or from SunSolve Online. Security patches are also available without a support contract via anonymous FTP from ftp.uu.net (IP 192.48.96.9) in the directory /systems/sun/sun-dist. Solbourne systems do not make use of the loadmodule utility. On these systems, the vulnerability may be removed by turning off the file's setuid bit by executing the following command as root: chmod 0755 /usr/openwin/bin/loadmodule ______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to thank Sun Microsystems and Solbourne for their response to this problem. ______________________________________________________________________________ For additional information or assistance, please contact CIAC: Voice: (510) 422-8193 FAX: (510) 423-8002 STU-III: (510) 423-2604 E-mail: ciac@llnl.gov Previous CIAC Bulletins and other information are available via anonymous FTP from irbis.llnl.gov (IP address 128.115.19.60). ______________________________________________________________________________ PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE and ESnet computing communities receive CIAC bulletins. If you are not part of these communities, please contact your agency's response team to report incidents. Your agency's team will coordinate with CIAC. The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is a world-wide organization. A list of FIRST member organizations and their constituencies can be obtained by sending email to docserver@first.org with an empty subject line and a message body containing the line: send first-contacts. This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor the University of California nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or the University of California. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government nor the University of California, and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.