Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 0 Location: Yakima, Washington State, USA
Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2004 10:34 am Post subject: New Security Update for OS X
Quote:
Security Update 2004-02-23 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following components:
Mac OS X pppd Format String Vulnerability
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY
The ppp daemon that comes installed by default in Mac OS X is vulnerable
to a format string vulnerability. The vulnerability is in a function
specific to pppd that does not allow for traditional exploitation
(arbitrary data written to arbitrary memory locations) via %n. However, it
is possible to read arbitrary data out of pppd's process. Under certain
circumstances, it is also possible to 'steal' PAP/CHAP authentication
credentials.
DETAILS
When pppd receives an invalid command line argument, it will eventually
pass it as a format specifier to vslprintf(). This function is a custom
replacement for vsnprintf(), and does contains a small subset of the
format specifiers. ?The offending function is called option_error:
As we can see, there is a specific Apple ifdef that will pass our buffer
directly to error().
By utilizing one of the techniques outlined in scut's paper, "Exploiting
Format String Vulnerabilities", it may be possible to access PAP and/or
CHAP credentials, if the OS X system is being used as a PPP server.
Vendor Response:
This is fixed in Security Update 2004-02-23 for Mac OS X 10.3.2 and Mac OS
X 10.2.8. Information about Apple Security Updates may be found at
http://www.info.apple.com/.
Recommendation:
Install the vendor supplied upgrade.
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Information:
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the
following names to these issues. These are candidates for inclusion in the
CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security
problems.
Joined: 24 Feb 2004 Posts: 0 Location: South-Texas
Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 4:41 pm Post subject:
Hi All,
I'm new to the forum but a long time reader.
Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't this Update also a fix for the tcpdump issue Mac OS X has been having to where you can get the admin password to the machine via the dump.
I could have been mistaken. It was late when I downloaded the update.
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