__________________________________________________ USG Security Advisory http://www.usg.org.uk/advisories/2003.001.txt inkubus@hushmail.com USG- SA- 2003.001 24- Jan- 2003 __________________________________________________ Package: slocate Vulnerability: local buffer overflow Type: local Risk: high, users can gain high privileges in the system. System tested: RedHat Linux 7.3 (Valhalla) with slocate-2.6-1 from RPM Credits: Knight420, Team TESO, Michal Zalewski, Aleph1, dvdman Description: Accordingly to research done by USG team members and Knight420 who informed us about this vulnerability a week earlier, there is a local buffer overflow in th e slocate package shipped with the most newer RedHat distributions, we have tested the vulnerabil ity only in RedHat Linux 7.2 and 7.3 but we think that other Linux/*nix systems that provide sloca te package may be vulnerable too. The overflow appears when the slocate is runned with two parameters: -c and -r , using as arguments a 1024 (or 10240, as Knight420 has informed us earlier) bytes string. [inkubus@USG audit]$ rpm -qf /usr/bin/slocate && ls -al /usr/bin/slocate slocate-2.6-1 -rwxr-sr-x 1 root slocate 25020 Jun 25 2001 /usr/bin/slocate [inkubus@USG audit]$ /usr/bin/slocate -c `perl -e "print 'A' x 1024"` -r `perl -e "print 'A' x 1024"` Segmentation fault [inkubus@USG audit]$ gdb /usr/bin/slocate GNU gdb Red Hat Linux (5.1.90CVS-5) Copyright 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. Type "show copying" to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux"...(no debugging symbols found).. . (gdb) r -c `perl -e "print 'A' x 1024"` -r `perl -e "print 'A' x 1024"` Starting program: /usr/bin/slocate -c `perl -e "print 'A' x 1024"` -r `perl -e "print 'A' x 1024"` warning: slocate: could not open database: /var/lib/slocate/slocate.db: Permiss ion denied warning: You need to run the 'updatedb' command (as root) to create the databas e. warning: slocate: decode_db(): ÐßBÐßBØßBØßBàßBàßBèßBèßBðßBðßBøßBøßB: No such fi le or directory warning: You need to run the 'updatedb' command (as root) to create the databas e. (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging sym bols found)... Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. 0x42080b1b in strlen () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6 (gdb) The exploitation is trivial, we have coded already a POC exploit that will be p ublished to the bugtraq next days. The author has been notified via: klindsay@mkintraweb.com ------------------------------------------------------------------- inkubus@hushmail.com Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated. ------------------------------------------------------------------- EOF