McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator Remote Compromise Release Date: July 13, 2006 Severity: High (Remote Code Execution) Vendor: McAfee Systems Affected: McAfee Common Management (EPO) Agent versions below version 3.5.5.438 Overview: McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is the remote security management software for the McAfee enterprise product suite. EPO allows you to configure and enforce protection policies, deploy and configure agents, and monitor security status from a centralized console. eEye Digital Security has discovered a serious flaw within the Framework Service component of the McAfee EPO management console. The Framework service is enabled and running by default on all servers and agents. The framework service listens by default on port 8081 and accepts requests over the HTTP protocol. The framework service allows for remotely submitting configuration and update changes. Each request is encrypted, SHA-1 hashed and DSA signed, and written to a file on disk. Due to a directory traversal attack, it is possible to write any file with any contents to anywhere on the remote system. This flaw allows a remote attacker to anonymously compromise an affected system and execute code within the SYSTEM context. Additional Commentary: This vulnerability was discovered by McAfee and eEye Digital Security, individually of each other. McAfee had silently fixed this vulnerability, prior to the discovery by eEye. It is good for any software company to be proactive in trying to secure their software. However, it is equally important for software vendors to create a separation of security and features when providing updates. In this case, fixing an extremely critical vulnerability without the proper notification is a disservice to customers. The mindset of most customers, especially when dealing with agent software, is to use what works. This creates a scenario where organizations would potentially choose to stick with their current deployments, rather than re-deploying hundreds, if not thousands, of new agents for what would appear to solely contain innocuous feature updates. We hope organizations take note and verify they do indeed have the latest ePO framework installed, and if not, update as soon as possible. -Marc Maiffret Technical Details: The framework service accepts POST requests over the /spipe/pkg interface. These POST requests contain a header which indicates the type of package request, UUID, and computer hostname. Depending on the request, the block that follows may contain data specific to that request. In the case of this vulnerability, the type of request (PackageType) is "PropsResponse". The data that follows first specifies a directory and xml filename, and is followed by the contents of the xml file. Due to improper sanity checking on the directory and filename, it is possible to use a directory traversal attack to write a user defined filename, with user defined contents, anywhere on the system. A factor that would hinder exploitation is the fact that the file is immediately deleted after use - this problem can be overcome by increasing the file data length field to exceed the actual data length. Each package request is obfuscated by XOR'ing the package data with the static byte 0xAA, and is then SHA-1 hashed and DSA signed. The vulnerable package format follows: +00h WORD magic = "PO" (0x4F50) +02h DWORD = 20000001h, 20001001h, or 30000001 +06h DWORD file offset of XML +0Ah [E0h] fixed-length data +0Ah DWORD +0Eh DWORD +12h DWORD length of XML +16h [40h] ASCII ??? GUID +56h [40h] ASCII ??? GUID +96h DWORD +9Ah [???] ASCII host name ... +EAh [...] name-value pairs X+00h DWORD length of following name string +04h [...] ASCII name string (no null terminator) X+00h DWORD length of following value data +04h [...] value data (null terminated if ASCII string) X+00h [...] XML +00h WORD +02h WORD length of following file name string +04h [...] ASCII .xml file name string * traversal attack, may be any directory and file extension X+00h DWORD length of following XML * increase length to prevent deletion +04h [...] ASCII XML * filename data X+00h DWORD length of signature data = 2Ch +04h WORD (big-endian) number of bits in DSA signature 'r' component +06h [14h] DSA signature 'r' component (technically it's variable-length) +1Ah WORD (big-endian) number of bits in DSA signature 's' component +1Ch [14h] DSA signature 's' component (also variable-length) The package may be modified to generate any file, anywhere on the system, with any extension. Exploitation is 100% reliable due to the fact we are merely taking advantage of functions already implemented within the framework service. Protection: Retina - Network Security Scanner - has been updated to identify this vulnerability. Blink - Endpoint Vulnerability Prevention - preemptively protects from this vulnerability. Vendor Status: McAfee customers must login to the McAfee customer website and download version 3.5.5.438 or higher of the Common Management Agent (ePO Framework) and upgrade existing ePO agent deployments. For more information, McAfee has published a knowledgebase article, which can be found here. https://secure.nai.com/us/forms/downloads/upgrades/login.asp Credit: Barnaby Jack Additional Research: Derek Soeder Related Links: Retina Network Security Scanner - Free Trial Blink Endpoint Vulnerability Prevention - Free Trial Greetings: Derek (props!), D R E, Carlos, the Samyo's, MereMac, Big Smooth and the rest of the boys from R-Block. 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