TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Symantec Multiple Product Intel Alert Originator Service Invalid Length Check Overflow Vulnerability

ZDI-09-061: 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 5859. 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 flaws are exposed via the MsgSys.exe process that listens by default on TCP port 38929. This process forwards requests to the Intel Originator Service (ioa.exe) process. The iao.exe process fails to validate length specifiers within the request in several locations leading to stack based buffer overflows. The overflows occurring during calls to strcpy and memcpy 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

    2007-11-07 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2009-04-28 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Sebastian Apelt (sebastian.apelt@siberas.de)