iDefense Security Advisory 07.15.08: Oracle Internet Directory Pre-Authentication LDAP DoS Vulnerability
iDefense Security Advisory 07.15.08
http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/
Jul 15, 2008
I. BACKGROUND
Internet Directory is Oracle's implementation of the Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) v3 service. It is used in conjunction
with Oracle Identity Management to implement user administration in the
Oracle environment. More information can be found at the following URL.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/oid/index.html
II. DESCRIPTION
Remote exploitation of a pre-authentication input validation
vulnerability in Oracle Corp.'s Oracle Internet Directory allows an
attacker to conduct a denial of service attack on a vulnerable host.
Internet Directory consists of two processes. One process acts as a
listener. It handles incoming connections and passes them off to the
second process. The second process, which handles requests, contains
the vulnerability.
When processing a malformed LDAP request, it is possible to cause the
handler to dereference a NULL pointer. This results in the process
crashing. Future connection requests will be accepted by the listener
process, and then immediately closed when it finds that there is no
handler process running.
III. ANALYSIS
Exploitation of this vulnerability allows an attacker to deny service to
legitimate users of the directory server. In order to exploit this
issue, an attacker must be able to establish an LDAP session with the
vulnerable server. This is typically done via TCP port 389 or the
SSL-enabled TCP port 636. No authentication is needed. In order to
restore functionality, the listener process must be stopped and
restarted.
IV. DETECTION
iDefense confirmed the existence of this vulnerability in Oracle
Internet Directory for Windows version 10.1.4.0.1 with the April 2007
CPU installed. Previous versions may also be affected.
V. WORKAROUND
iDefense is currently unaware of any workarounds for this issue.
VI. VENDOR RESPONSE
Oracle Corp. has addressed this vulnerability with the release of their
July 2008 Critical Patch Update. For more information, visit the
following URL.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/critical-patch-updates/cpujul2008.html
VII. CVE INFORMATION
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the
name CVE-2008-2595 to this issue. This is a candidate for inclusion in
the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org/), which standardizes names for
security problems.
VIII. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE
05/11/2007 Initial vendor notification
05/11/2007 Initial vendor response
07/15/2008 Coordinated public disclosure
IX. CREDIT
This vulnerability was reported to iDefense by Joxean Koret.
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