TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Symantec Multiple Product Intel Alert Originator Service Stack Overflow Vulnerability

ZDI-09-018: April 28th, 2009

CVE ID

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 5959. For further product information on the TippingPoint IPS:

Vulnerability Details

This vulnerability allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition, Symantec Client Security and Symantec Endpoint Protection. Authentication is not required to exploit this vulnerability.

The specific flaw resides in the Alert Originator service, iao.exe, which listens by default on TCP port 38292. The process blindly copies user-supplied data to a stack buffer via a memcpy call. By supplying a specially crafted packet, an attacker can overflow that buffer leading to arbitrary code execution in the context of the SYSTEM user.

Vendor Response

Symantec has issued an update to correct this vulnerability. More details can be found at:

Disclosure Timeline

    2007-09-14 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2009-04-28 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Sebastian Apelt (webmaster@buzzworld.org)