Posted on 05/04/2004 5:20:32 PM PDT by FourPeas
04 May 2004
Apple releases range of patches for known and unknown vulnerabilities.
By Kieren McCarthy, Techworld
Apple has released a range of patches for security holes - both old and new - for its Mac OS X operating system, which it advises users to download immediately.
The company is downplaying the issue but one security company at least is concerned that the vulnerabilities could be extremely serious. Secunia has given the five - yes, five - patches a "highly critical" rating and warned that they may allow hijacking, security bypass, data manipulation, privilege escalation, denial of service and system access.
In other words, it makes Microsoft's current Sasser problems look no more than a nasty nip. The difference of course is that Windows is the vast majority of the market and Macs account for only three percent of operating systems. There isn't a worm exploiting the holes as yet but the company is strongly advising users to download and install the patches as the OS looks like an easy target at the moment.
Secunia has given the series of patches a "highly critical" rating, which it explained was due to the Apple's dismissive attitude to one of the holes. Secunia described a vulnerability within AppleFileServer that allows for a buffer overflow as an attempt to "improve the handling of long passwords", but security specialists @stake warned that it could lead to the full system access.
This strange habit of pretending a big problem is of no significance was also displayed last month, when Apple explained that it was "aware" of a Trojan horse that could be used to compromise its systems and was investigating it, but refused to say any more, commenting only that it has an excellent track record of patching holes.
And another "highly critical" hole in the company's Quick Time media player just this week has also been largely ignored by Apple (publicly at least), with the company only releasing an advisory under pressure from the company that discovered the hole, eEye.
All this has meant that Secunia is highly suspicious of two previously unannounced holes patched today. One exists within the CoreFoundation when handling environment variables and could allow for privilege escalation. The other is within RAdmin when handling large requests and could be a system compromise.
As such, Secunia has posted a note which reads: "The severity has been set to 'highly critical' because the unspecified issues are likely to be more severe than claimed by the vendor."
The other two holes are older and known. One is in Apache 2 and can be exploited by adding malicious characters into log files to cause a denial of service. The other covers two holes in IPSec that can again be used to cause a denial of service.
Apple's half-hearted effort to these holes can be found here. While Secunia's full rundown on the problems can be found here.
Is Apple being complacent about its security? Or have the security vendors got it wrong? Is the fact there isn't a worm an indication that this is blown out of proportion? Or is it just a matter of time?
This article claims the SASSER WORM, which is reported to have invaded millions of computers worldwide, is a minor issue compared to the Mac patches for NON-exploited minor security issues.
1) Some older vulnerabilities in Apache 2 can be exploited by malicious people to inject malicious characters into log files and cause a DoS (Denial of Service). . .2) Two vulnerabilities in the IPSec implementation can be exploited by malicious people to conduct MitM attacks (Man-in-the-Middle), establish unauthorised connections, or cause a DoS. . .
3) A vulnerability within AppleFileServer can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system. . .
The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error within the password handling. This can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow by passing an AFP "LoginExt" packet with a string in the "PathName" field, which is longer than the value specified in the packet.
Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code with "root" privileges.
4) An unspecified vulnerability exists within the CoreFoundation when handling environment variables. This may potentially be a privilege escalation vulnerability. This has not been confirmed, though.
5) An unspecified vulnerability exists within RAdmin when handling large requests. This may potentially be a system compromise issue. This has not been confirmed, though. According to the vendor, only version 10.2.8 is affected.
NOTE: The severity has been set to "Highly critical" because the unspecified issues are likely to be more severe than claimed by the vendor.
This conclusion is based on the fact that Apple merely describes vulnerability 3 as an attempt to "improve the handling of long passwords". However, according to @stake, the vulnerability can in fact be exploited to compromise a vulnerable system.
Let's see... Security issues 1,2 and 3 have already been covered on FreeRepublic and were found to be minor, unexploited and unlikely to be capable of spreading beyond an attacked computer. Issue #1 allows some extraneous charachters to be inserted into a "log file"... tell me, does anyone out there EXECUTE log files, even on a Microsoft computer? Having a Denial of Service occur because of a corrupted log file is not too serious a security breech. It might prevent business from being conducted but it won't allow a remote access of data files. Log files are TEXT files to be read. Issue #2 requires the much more serious security breech of allowing a malicious server to exist on your network so that the rogue server can intercept communications to a permitted "honest" server. This is an issue that can hit Windows users as well. In issue #3, @Stake was unable to demonstrate the exploit could be used to execute code.
Issues 4 and 5 were only "discovered" because Apple announced their fixes for these "issues". They are under no requirement to release the description so that hackers can attempt to damage un-updated computers.
NONE of these minor issues can even be included in the same rank as the security hole being exploited by SASSER in Microsoft's products in which malicious code is invading computers AND executing itself.
So we have THREE known issues and two more previously unknown issues that have NOW BEEN FIXED in the Apple OSX system. This hardly earns the highly exagerated headline "Mac OS X riddled with security holes"!
Talk about hyperbole.
Another search for "OS X virus" resulted in lots of hits... but all about articles with the word "virus" only. Strange, they were all about Windows machines for the most part!
There were a spattering of "linux" hits.
Incidentally, searching for "OSX" for security advisories on Seconia, only 33 hits were reported. Zero viruses.
Searching for "Windows" resulted in 264 security advisories and 7378 basic virus definitions.
Searching for "Linux" resulted in 1589 security advisories and 2633 basic viruses for Linux. Sorry Penguins...
I fielded a flurry of calls today from current clients using Microsoft Windows wanting assurance that they were safe from SASSER. Since I had long since updated them, I was able to assure them they were.
However, I find that the majority of Windows users that I see as first time clients have NEVER updated since their machines were new... even those with highspeed internet connections. They all tell me they ignore the alerts. Now THEY are vulnerable.
They're similar to those annoying MacMoonies, but they don't hang around airports in long flowing robes, trying to "act different".
They do, for the most part, have scraggly hipster-wannabe goatees though.
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