__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN McAfee Virex Vulnerability [US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#345233] February 22, 2007 22:00 GMT Number R-160 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: McAfee Virex automatic updates may not properly authenticate the source of updates. PLATFORM: McAfee Virex DAMAGE: May allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on a vulnerable system. SOLUTION: Upgrade to the appropriate version. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is HIGH. An intruder who can spoof the Virex update ASSESSMENT: server could coerce the download and execution of arbitrary code as root. ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/r-160.shtml ORIGINAL BULLETIN: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/345233 ______________________________________________________________________________ [***** Start US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#345233 *****] Vulnerability Note VU#345233 McAfee Virex fails to properly authenticate the source of updates Overview McAfee Virex automatic updates may not properly authenticate the source of updates. This may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on a vulnerable system. I. Description McAfee Virex is anti-virus software for the Mac OS X platform. McAfee Virex 7 for Mac OS X connects to a remote FTP server to retrieve updates. However, Virex fails to properly authenticate the server or the contents of the retrieved updates. This may allow a remote attacker to spoof the update server and its contents, allowing that attacker to download and execute arbitrary commands on a Virex client system. II. Impact A remote attacker can execute arbitrary commands. III. Solution Apply a patch from McAfee Virex A patch to address this issue is available by visiting the McAfee SecurityCenter and clicking the update button. Systems Affected Vendor Status Date Updated McAfee Vulnerable 28-Aug-2006 References http://prisms.cs.umass.edu/~kevinfu/papers/secureupdates-hotsec06.pdf Credit Thanks to Anthony Bellissimo, John Burgess, and Kevin Fu for reporting this vulnerability. This document was written by Jeff Gennari. Other Information Date Public 07/31/2006 Date First Published 02/15/2007 04:28:45 PM Date Last Updated 02/16/2007 CERT Advisory CVE Name Metric 0.11 Document Revision 27 [***** End US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#345233 *****] _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of US-CERT 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. 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