NSFOCUS Security Advisory SA2003-03 - A local heap overflow was found in Sun Solaris's CDE manager dtsession which allows local users to execute code as root by setting a long HOME environment variable. Solaris 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, and 2.9 is affected.
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NSFOCUS Security Advisory(SA2003-03)
Topic: Solaris dtsession Heap Buffer Overflow Vulnerability
Release Date: 2003-03-31
CVE CAN ID: CAN-2003-0092
Affected system:
===================
Sun Solaris 2.5.1 (SPARC/x86)
Sun Solaris 2.6 (SPARC/x86)
Sun Solaris 7 (SPARC/x86)
Sun Solaris 8 (SPARC/x86)
Sun Solaris 9 (SPARC/x86)
Summary:
=========
NSFOCUS Security Team has found a buffer overflow vulnerability in dtsession
which is an application in Sun Solaris system. Exploiting the vulnerability
local attackers could gain root privilege.
Description:
============
dtsession is a CDE session manager. It provides session management functionality
that is compatible to ICCCM 1.1 during the users' session (from login to
logout). It launches a window manager and allows to save/restore/lock session,
to launch screen saver, and to allocate colors for desktop compatible clients.
By default setuid root bit is set to CDE dtsession which is shipped
with Solaris. Because valid length check has not been implemented when
handling HOME variable, attackers could cause a heap buffer overflow. By
carefully crafting data attackers could run arbitrary code with root privilege.
Workaround:
=============
NSFOCUS suggests to disable suid root bit of dtsession temporarily:
# chmod a-s /usr/dt/bin/dtsession
Note: This might prevent a user from being to unlock the screen
by the list of keyholders (including root).
Vendor Status:
==============
2002-12-11 Informed the vendor.
2002-12-13 The vendor confirmed the vulnerability.
2003-03-31 The vendor released a Sun Alert and patches for this issue.
The Sun Alert is available at:
https://sunsolve.Sun.COM/pub-cgi/retrieve.pl?doc=fsalert/52388
The patches are:
Solaris 2.6 106027-12
Solaris 2.6_x86 106028-12
Solaris 7 107702-12
Solaris 7_x86 107703-12
Solaris 8 109354-19
Solaris 8_x86 109355-18
Solaris 9 114497-01
Solaris 9_x86 114498-01
Additional Information:
========================
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the
name CAN-2003-0092 to this issue. This is a candidate for inclusion in the
CVE list (https://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security
problems. Candidates may change significantly before they become official
CVE entries.
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==========
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NSFOCUS Security Team <security@nsfocus.com>
NSFOCUS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CO.,LTD
(https://www.nsfocus.com)
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