__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN Apache 1.3.27 HTTP Server Release October 7, 2002 20:00 GMT Number N-005 [REVISED 7 July 2004] ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: The release of Apache 1.3.27 addresses and fixes three security vulnerabilites: 1) A vulnerability exists in all versions of Apache prior to 1.3.27 on platforms using System V shared memory based scoreboards. 2) Apache was susceptible to a cross site scripting vulnerability in the default 404 page of any web server. 3) There were some possible overflows in ab.c. PLATFORM: Unix OS variants. DAMAGE: 1) The System V shared memory based scoreboards vulnerability allows an attacker who can execute under the Apache UID to exploit the Apache shared memory scoreboard format and send a signal to any process as root or cause a denial of service attack. 2) The cross site scripting vulnerability in the default 404 page of any web server hosted on a domain will allow wildcard DNS lookups. 3) The possible overflows in ab.c could be exploited by a malicious server. Although this vulnerability is not in Apache itself, it is one of the support programs bundled with Apache. SOLUTION: Apache strongly recommends users of older versions, especially of the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family upgrade as soon as possible to 1.3.27. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is HIGH. The most serious vulnerability allows ASSESSMENT: execution of code to a process by a malicious attacker and attain root access. ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/n-005.shtml ORIGINAL BULLETIN: http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement.html ADDITIONAL LINKS: Visit HEWLETT-PACKARD Subscription Service for: HPSBUX0210-224 SSRT2393 rev.2 ______________________________________________________________________________ REVISION HISTORY: 07/07/2004 - added a link to Hewlett-Packard HPSBUX0210-224 SSRT2393 rev. 2 for HP-UX versions B.11.00, B.11.11, B.11.20, B.11.22 running ApacheStrong or HPApache HP-UX Apache-based Web Servers; HP-UX B.11.04 running Virtualvault 4.5, 4.6; and HP-UX and Solaris running OV-NNM6.2. [****** Start of Apache Bulletin ******] Apache 1.3.27 Released The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Server Project are pleased to announce the release of version 1.3.27 of the Apache HTTP Server. This Announcement notes the significant changes in 1.3.27 as compared to 1.3.26. This version of Apache is principally a security and bug fix release. A summary of the bug fixes is given at the end of this document. Of particular note is that 1.3.27 addresses and fixes 3 security vulnerabilities. CAN-2002-0839 (cve.mitre.org)[1]: A vulnerability exists in all versions of Apache prior to 1.3.27 on platforms using System V shared memory based scoreboards. This vulnerability allows an attacker who can execute under the Apache UID to exploit the Apache shared memory scoreboard format and send a signal to any process as root or cause a local denial of service attack. We thank iDefense for their responsible notification and disclosure of this issue. CAN-2002-0840 (cve.mitre.org)[2]: Apache is susceptible to a cross site scripting vulnerability in the default 404 page of any web server hosted on a domain that allows wildcard DNS lookups. We thank Matthew Murphy for notification of this issue. CAN-2002-0843 (cve.mitre.org)[3]: There were some possible overflows in ab.c which could be exploited by a malicious server. Note that this vulnerability is not in Apache itself, but rather one of the support programs bundled with Apache. We thank David Wagner for the responsible notification and disclosure of this issue. We consider Apache 1.3.27 to be the best version of Apache 1.3 available and we strongly recommend that users of older versions, especially of the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible. No further releases will be made in the 1.2.x family. Apache 1.3.27 is available for download from http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/ Please see the CHANGES_1.3 file in the same directory for a full list of changes. Binary distributions are available from http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/binaries/ The source and binary distributions are also available via any of the mirrors listed at http://www.apache.org/mirrors/ As of Apache 1.3.12 binary distributions contain all standard Apache modules as shared objects (if supported by the platform) and include full source code. Installation is easily done by executing the included install script. See the README.bindist and INSTALL.bindist files for a complete explanation. Please note that the binary distributions are only provided for your convenience and current distributions for specific platforms are not always available. Win32 binary distributions are based on the Microsoft Installer (.MSI) technology. While development continues to make this installation method more robust, questions should be directed to the news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows newsgroup. For an overview of new features introduced after 1.2 please see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/new_features_1_3.html In general, Apache 1.3 offers several substantial improvements over version 1.2, including better performance, reliability and a wider range of supported platforms, including Windows NT and 2000 (which fall under the "Win32" label), OS2, Netware, and TPE threaded platforms. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR APACHE USERS: Apache 1.3 was designed for Unix OS variants. While the ports to non-Unix platforms (such as Win32, Netware or OS2) are of an acceptable quality, Apache 1.3 is not optimized for these platforms. Security, stability, or performance issues on these non-Unix ports do not generally apply to the Unix version, due to software's Unix origin. Apache 2.0 has been structured for multiple operating systems from its inception, by introducing the Apache Portability Library and MPM modules. Users on non-Unix platforms are strongly encouraged to move up to Apache 2.0 for better performance, stability and security on their platforms. Apache is the most popular web server in the known universe; over half of the servers on the Internet are running Apache or one of its variants. Apache 1.3.27 Major changes Security vulnerabilities * Fix the security vulnerability noted in CAN-2002-0839 (cve.mitre.org) regarding ownership permissions of System V shared memory based scoreboards. The fix resulted in the new ShmemUIDisUser directive. * Fix the security vulnerability noted in CAN-2002-0840 (cvs.mitre.org) regarding a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the default error page when using wildcard DNS. * Fix the security vulnerability noted in CAN-2002-0843 (cve.mitre.org) regarding some possible overflows in ab.c which could be exploited by a malicious server. New features The main new features in 1.3.27 (compared to 1.3.26) are: * The new ErrorHeader directive has been added. * Configuration file globbing can now use simple pattern matching. * The protocol version (eg: HTTP/1.1) in the request line parsing is now case insensitive. * ap_snprintf() can now distinguish between an output which was truncated, and an output which exactly filled the buffer. * Add ProtocolReqCheck directive, which determines if Apache will check for a valid protocol string in the request (eg: HTTP/1.1) and return HTTP_BAD_REQUEST if not valid. Versions of Apache prior to 1.3.26 would silently ignore bad protocol strings, but 1.3.26 included a more strict check. This makes it runtime configurable. * Added support for Berkeley-DB/4.x to mod_auth_db. * httpd -V will now also print out the compile time defined HARD_SERVER_LIMIT value. New features that relate to specific platforms: * Support Caldera OpenUNIX 8. * Use SysV semaphores by default on OpenBSD. * Implemented file locking in mod_rewrite for the NetWare CLib platform. Bugs fixed The following bugs were found in Apache 1.3.26 (or earlier) and have been fixed in Apache 1.3.27: * mod_proxy fixes: - The cache in mod_proxy was incorrectly updating the Content-Length value from 304 responses when doing validation. - Fix a problem in proxy where headers from other modules were added to the response headers when this was already done in the core already. * In 1.3.26, a null or all blank Content-Length field would be triggered as an error; previous versions would silently ignore this and assume 0. 1.3.27 restores this previous behavior. * Win32: Fix one byte buffer overflow in ap_get_win32_interpreter when a CGI script's #! line does not contain a \r or \n (i.e. a line feed character) in the first 1023 bytes. The overflow is always a '\0' (string termination) character. References [1] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2002-0839 [2] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2002-0840 [3] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2002-0843 [****** End of Apache Bulletin ******] _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of The Apache Software Foundation for the information contained in this bulletin. _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, 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) M-125: Apache/mod_ssl Worm M-126: MS VM JDBC Classes Vulnerabilities M-127: Microsoft Office Documents Expose ODBC Passwords CIACTech02-005: Understanding Capturing Files with Microsoft Word Field Codes M-129: Microsoft FrontPage SmartHTML Interpreter Vulnerability M-128: Apple QuickTime ActiveX Buffer Overrun N-001: Microsoft File Decompression Functions Vulnerabilities N-002: Microsoft HTML Help ActiveX Control Vulnerabilities N-003: Microsoft Cumulative Patch for SQL Server N-004: SGI rpcbind User-level Vulnerabilities