-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ============================================================================= FreeBSD-SA-00:61 Security Advisory FreeBSD, Inc. Topic: tcpdump contains remote vulnerabilities [REISSUED] Category: core Module: tcpdump Announced: 2000-10-31 Reissued: 2000-11-06 Credits: Discovered during internal auditing. Affects: All releases of FreeBSD 3.x, 4.x prior to 4.2 FreeBSD 3.5.1-STABLE and 4.1.1-STABLE prior to the correction date Corrected: 2000-10-04 (FreeBSD 4.1.1-STABLE) 2000-10-05 (FreeBSD 3.5.1-STABLE) Vendor status: Patch released FreeBSD only: NO 0. Revision History v1.0 2000-10-31 Initial release v1.1 2000-11-06 Corrected patch I. Background tcpdump is a tool for monitoring network activity. II. Problem Description Several overflowable buffers were discovered in the version of tcpdump included in FreeBSD, during internal source code auditing. Some simply allow the remote attacker to crash the local tcpdump process, but there is a more serious vulnerability in the decoding of AFS ACL packets in the more recent version of tcpdump (tcpdump 3.5) included in FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE, 4.1-RELEASE and 4.1.1-RELEASE, which may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the local system (usually root, since root privileges are required to run tcpdump). The former issue may be a problem for systems using tcpdump as a form of intrusion detection system, i.e. to monitor suspicious network activity: after the attacker crashes any listening tcpdump processes their subsequent activities will not be observed. All released versions of FreeBSD prior to the correction date including 3.5.1-RELEASE, 4.0-RELEASE, 4.1-RELEASE and 4.1.1-RELEASE are vulnerable to the "remote crash" problems, and FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE, 4.1-RELEASE and 4.1.1-RELEASE are also vulnerable to the "remote execution" vulnerability. Both problems were corrected in 4.1.1-STABLE prior to the release of FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE. III. Impact Remote users can cause the local tcpdump process to crash, and (under FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE, 4.1-RELEASE, 4.1.1-RELEASE and 4.1.1-STABLE prior to the correction date) may be able to cause arbitrary code to be executed as the user running tcpdump, usually root. IV. Workaround Do not use vulnerable versions of tcpdump in network environments which may contain packets from untrusted sources. V. Solution One of the following: 1) Upgrade your vulnerable FreeBSD system to 4.1.1-STABLE or 3.5.1-STABLE after the respective correction dates. 2a) FreeBSD 3.x systems prior to the correction date Download the patch and the detached PGP signature from the following locations, and verify the signature using your PGP utility. ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/patches/SA-00:61/tcpdump-3.x.patch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/patches/SA-00:61/tcpdump-3.x.patch.asc # cd /usr/src/contrib/tcpdump # patch -p < /path/to/patch # cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/tcpdump # make depend && make all install 2b) FreeBSD 4.x systems prior to the correction date NOTE: The patch distributed with the original version of this advisory was incomplete and did not include all of the security fixes made to the tcpdump utility. In particular, it did not address the remote code execution vulnerability. Download the patch and the detached PGP signature from the following locations, and verify the signature using your PGP utility. ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/patches/SA-00:61/tcpdump-4.x.patch.v1.1 ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/patches/SA-00:61/tcpdump-4.x.patch.v1.1.asc # cd /usr/src/contrib/tcpdump # patch -p < /path/to/patch # cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/tcpdump # make depend && make all install -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iQCVAwUBOgcNKFUuHi5z0oilAQGYQAP9F00eE4rd0M46f8WMWTO7uFb1gV2p4Y0l KV0vT1wMy+PdmFNpo7SVrb/tdpa4Wtxb/Q/tu7RDZQqFI29yBPTFnE1iu8T2BSAm cO/dE5ypkjJkEjf8QjxqQXVhTbtIVVQa3Tosw3AdUFP0gKHUkZ36ryCQVxbqRMQK c0ZkdbwESp8= =uaOo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----