__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Center ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN Macintosh OS-X Application Manager Vulnerability October 19, 2001 22:00 GMT Number M-007 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: There is a problem in the Macintosh application manager that allows a new process to start in the context of the front process. If the front process is a suid root application, the new process starts with root access. PLATFORM: Apple Macintosh OS-X 10.1 and earlier DAMAGE: Normal users with physical access to a workstation can get root access. SOLUTION: A patch should be available from Apple by midnight on 10/19/01. Running Software Update after that time should automatically download the patch from Apple. The patch should also be on Apple’s Security Update page by next week. If you are unable to get the patch a work around is to remove suid .app type applications or reset the suid bit on those applications. If you reset the suid bit, you must login as root to run these applications. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is MEDIUM. The vulnerability allows a normal user at ASSESSMENT: the console to get root access. The exploit is in the wild and simple to execute. ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/m-007.shtml PATCHES: Security Updates from Apple: http://www.apple.com/support/security/security_updates.html ______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC has learned of a vulnerability in the Apple Macintosh application manager that allows a normal user sitting at the console to get root access. The exploit for this vulnerability is in the wild and is simple to perform. The vulnerability starts new applications in the context of the currently active application. If the active application is a suid root application, the new program is started in the context of the root user. It does not appear at this time that the exploit can be performed remotely. Patches ======= Patches should be available from Apple by midnight on 10/19/01. Running the Software Update control panel after that time should download and install the patch. Later in the week, the patch should be on the Security Updates page on the Apple website. Work Around =========== If you are unable to get a copy of the update, the following work around will temporarily secure your systems. First, login as root and locate all the type .app applications that have the suid bit set. Do this by opening a terminal window and running the following command. find /Applications -perm -4000 -print On a newly upgraded OS-X 10.1 system, this command finds the following programs as having the suid bit set: Disk Utility NetInfo Manager PrintingReset (Print Center) From the list of programs that have the suid bit set, determine which could be removed from your system without impacting your operations. On a working system, you can probably delete the Disk Utility and the NetInfo Manager but removing the Print Center would likely be a problem. For those applications that you cannot remove from your system, reset the suid bit with a command like the following that was used on the NetInfo Manager. chmod u-s /Applications/Utilities/NetInfo\ Manager.app/Contents /MacOS/NetInfo\ Manager Note the \ escapes for the spaces in the directory path. After doing this, the NetInfo Manager will only work correctly for the root user. ______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Center, is the computer security incident response team for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the emergency backup response team for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CIAC is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. CIAC is also a founding member of FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, a global organization established to foster cooperation and coordination among computer security teams worldwide. CIAC services are available to DOE, DOE contractors, and the NIH. CIAC can be contacted at: Voice: +1 925-422-8193 (7x24) FAX: +1 925-423-8002 STU-III: +1 925-423-2604 E-mail: ciac@ciac.org Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive. World Wide Web: http://www.ciac.org/ Anonymous FTP: ftp.ciac.org PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE, ESnet, and NIH 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 via WWW at http://www.first.org/. 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, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, 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 or the University of California, and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. LAST 10 CIAC BULLETINS ISSUED (Previous bulletins available from CIAC) L-141: RSA BSAFE SSL-J 3.x Vulnerability L-142: RPC Endpoint Mapper Vulnerability L-143: HP libsecurity Vulnerability L-144: The W32.nimda Worm M-001: Cisco Secure IDS Signature Obfuscation Vulnerability M-002: Multi-Vendor format String Vulnerability in ToolTalk Service M-003: Hewlett-Packard rpcbind Security Vulnerability M-004: Excel and PowerPoint Macro Vulnerability M-005: Office XP Error Reporting May Send Sensitive Documents to Microsoft M-006: HP-UX telnetd Security Vulnerability