From agent99@csd.sgi.com Sat Aug 19 14:21:19 2000 From: SGI Security Coordinator Resent-From: mea culpa To: agent99@sgi.com Resent-To: jericho@attrition.org Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 22:12:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: WorldView Wnn vulnerability -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ______________________________________________________________________________ SGI Security Advisory Title: WorldView Wnn vulnerability Number: 20000803-01-A Date: August 17, 2000 ______________________________________________________________________________ SGI provides this information freely to the SGI user community for its consideration, interpretation, implementation and use. SGI recommends that this information be acted upon as soon as possible. SGI provides the information in this Security Advisory on an "AS-IS" basis only, and disclaims all warranties with respect thereto, express, implied or otherwise, including, without limitation, any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall SGI be liable for any loss of profits, loss of business, loss of data or for any indirect, special, exemplary, incidental or consequential damages of any kind arising from your use of, failure to use or improper use of any of the instructions or information in this Security Advisory. ______________________________________________________________________________ SGI acknowledges the root buffer overflow vulnerability in WorldView reported by Shadow Penguin Security Org. on the FreeWnn Mailing List: http://www.tomo.gr.jp/users/wnn/0008ml/msg00000.html (in Japanese) and also reported by Omron Software on http://www.omronsoft.co.jp/SP/support/pcunix/wnn/update1.html (in Japanese) SGI is currently working on patches. Omron WorldView is an optional purchased product used by SGI customers that require foreign language support in IRIX. It is not installed by default on base IRIX. Only SGI systems that have WorldView installed are vulnerable to this issue. The WorldView vulnerability can lead to root access through a buffer overflow exploit. A workaround is provided below to minimize exposure to the buffer overflow by changing ownership of the jserver to a non-privileged user. No further information is available at this time. As further information becomes available, additional advisories will be issued via the normal SGI security information distribution methods including the wiretap mailing list. The steps below can be used to minimize exposure to the WorldView vulnerability. (Translated from Japanese) 1) Become the root user on the system. % /bin/su - Password: # 2) Verify WorldView is installed. Only systems that have WorldView installed are vulnerable. # versions -b I WorldView_base_jp 05/06/1998 WorldView Base Japanese 6.5 I WorldView_books_jp 05/06/1998 WorldView Books: Japanese 6.5 I WorldView_fonts_jp1 05/06/1998 WorldView Fonts Japanese, 6.5 I WorldView_japanese 05/06/1998 WorldView Japanese 6.5 3) If the WorldView is not currently needed, disable the jserver. # chkconfig jserver off Note: This will disable Japanese character input support. 4) Add the following lines to the files /etc/password and /etc/group with a text editor like vi. /etc/passwd: wnn:*:127:127:Wnn System Account:/usr/lib/wnn6:/bin/sh /etc/group: wnn:*:127 5) Change the owner of the WNN related files. # chown -R wnn.sys /usr/bin/Wnn6 # chown -R wnn.sys /usr/lib/wnn6 6) Verify that the file ownership changes have been made. # ls -ls /usr/bin/Wnn6/jserver 1136 -r-sr-xr-x 1 wnn sys 578660 # ls -ls /usr/lib/wnn6/serverdefs 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 wnn sys 662 7) Reboot the system. # reboot - ----------------------------------------- - --- SGI Security Information/Contacts --- - ----------------------------------------- If there are questions about this document, email can be sent to cse-security-alert@sgi.com. ------oOo------ SGI provides security information and patches for use by the entire SGI community. This information is freely available to any person needing the information and is available via anonymous FTP and the Web. The primary SGI anonymous FTP site for security information and patches is sgigate.sgi.com (204.94.209.1). Security information and patches are located under the directories ~ftp/security and ~ftp/patches, respectively. The SGI Security Headquarters Web page is accessible at the URL http://www.sgi.com/support/security/ . For issues with the patches on the FTP sites, email can be sent to cse-security-alert@sgi.com. For assistance obtaining or working with security patches, please contact your SGI support provider. ------oOo------ SGI provides a free security mailing list service called wiretap and encourages interested parties to self-subscribe to receive (via email) all SGI Security Advisories when they are released. Subscribing to the mailing list can be done via the Web (http://www.sgi.com/support/security/wiretap.html) or by sending email to SGI as outlined below. % mail wiretap-request@sgi.com subscribe wiretap end ^d In the example above, is the email address that you wish the mailing list information sent to. The word end must be on a separate line to indicate the end of the body of the message. The control-d (^d) is used to indicate to the mail program that you are finished composing the mail message. ------oOo------ SGI provides a comprehensive customer World Wide Web site. This site is located at http://www.sgi.com/support/security/ . ------oOo------ For reporting *NEW* SGI security issues, email can be sent to security-alert@sgi.com or contact your SGI support provider. A support contract is not required for submitting a security report. ______________________________________________________________________________ This information is provided freely to all interested parties and may be redistributed provided that it is not altered in any way, SGI is appropriately credited and the document retains and includes its valid PGP signature. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBOZtzDrQ4cFApAP75AQHl6AP7BwpZv6DT3JAJdOXEwUCVUHTCEkPwh9s9 XYTMyiLKeV3mSatHVO+SJLG76ApNcfkRDuRqTX4MCYKc7oHJQRvuw4F3wVCPPQAw UQFI3WAH++FAKZyeFngZo1Sjzd5LxAXK9ZR5V1EVM5tpSrqaMhNVGDeuO/zlK8uF xmEpeNlXROI= =Ym/i -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----