__________________________________________________________________ Insomnia Security Vulnerability Advisory: ISVA-080623.1 ___________________________________________________________________ Name: Altiris Notification Server Agent - Privilege Escalation Released: 23 June 2008 Advisory Update: 21 October 2008 Vendor Link: http://www.altiris.com/ Affected Products: Altiris Notification Server Agent 6.X Original Advisory: http://www.insomniasec.com/advisories/ISVA-080623.1.htm Researcher: Brett Moore, Insomnia Security http://www.insomniasec.com ___________________________________________________________________ _______________ Description _______________ Altiris Notification agent is installed as part of the Altiris packages to allow the Notification Server to manage updates for machines. It is usually installed to C:\Program Files\Altiris\Altiris Agent and the main running agent is called AeXNSAgent.exe. By default the agent runs under the Local System account and is vulnerable to numerous Shatter Attack vulnerabilities leading to an attacker running code under the Local System privilege. We reported a first instance of this vulnerabilty which was then patched, we then alerted Symantec to the second vulnerabilty. _______________ Details _______________ The about window of the agent contains a Rich Text Box. This can be viewed by clicking the About icon. Exploitation of the RichTextBox takes the following steps; * Locate the RichTextBox window * Set the text to cmd * Set the EditWordBreakProc of the RichTextBox to the location of the system() API call * Invoke the EditWordbreakProc function by double clicking the text. The initial patch that was released made changes to the message handler that prevents the messages used from reaching the window. We then reported the second issue. The notification agent has a listview as part of the visible Gui. This listview can be used to overwrite memory within the vulnerable process, leading to arbitrary command execution. This has been heavily documented in various whitepapers and list posts. By overwriting a function pointer, the unhandled exception pointer or the PEB lock pointer, obtaining a system level shell is trivial. _______________ Solution _______________ Symantec have released a security update to address this issue; http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2008.06.17.html _______________ Legals _______________ The information is provided for research and educational purposes only. Insomnia Security accepts no liability in any form whatsoever for any direct or indirect damages associated with the use of this information. ___________________________________________________________________ Insomnia Security Vulnerability Advisory: ISVA-080623.1 ___________________________________________________________________