Symantec Norton AntiVirus LiveUpdate Local Privilege Escalation iDEFENSE Security Advisory 10.20.05 www.idefense.com/application/poi/display?id=324&type=vulnerabilities October 20, 2005 I. BACKGROUND Symantec's Norton AntiVirus for Macintosh is an antivirus solution for the Mac OS X environment. More information is available at the link shown: http://www.symantec.com/nav/nav_mac/ II. DESCRIPTION Local exploitation of a design error in the LiveUpdate component of Symantec Corp.'s Norton Antivirus 9.0 for Macintosh may allow a user to gain elevated privileges. The vulnerability specifically exists in the permissions on the "/Library/Application Support/Norton Solutions Support/LiveUpdate/jlucaller" binary which appears to be a Java interpreter. This binary is setuid, meaning it will run with the permissions of the owner, and is owned by the System Administrator, which is equivalent to the Unix root user. A user can simply compile a Java program and provide it as an argument to this binary, and it will execute with root level privileges. III. ANALYSIS Successful exploitation allows a local attacker to execute arbitrary commands as the System Administrator user. This allows complete system compromise including the installation and removal of applications, and ability to read and write any file on the system. IV. DETECTION iDEFENSE has confirmed this vulnerability exists in version 9.0.3 of Norton Antivirus for Macintosh. V. WORKAROUND Unsetting the setuid bit from the "/Library/Application Support/Norton Solutions Support/LiveUpdate/jlucaller" binary will prevent exploitation, but may require that updates be performed as the System Administrator user. chmod -s "/Library/Application Support/Norton Solutions Support/LiveUpdate/jlucaller" VI. VENDOR RESPONSE The vendor has released the following advisory for this issue: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2005.10.19a.html VII. CVE INFORMATION The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the name CAN-2005-2759 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 08/31/2005 Initial vendor notification 08/31/2005 Initial vendor response 10/20/2005 Coordinated public disclosure IX. CREDIT DigitalMunition.com is credited with reporting this vulnerability. Get paid for vulnerability research http://www.idefense.com/poi/teams/vcp.jsp Free tools, research and upcoming events http://labs.idefense.com X. LEGAL NOTICES Copyright (c) 2005 iDEFENSE, Inc. Permission is granted for the redistribution of this alert electronically. It may not be edited in any way without the express written consent of iDEFENSE. If you wish to reprint the whole or any part of this alert in any other medium other than electronically, please email customerservice (at) idefense (dot) com [email concealed] for permission. Disclaimer: The information in the advisory is believed to be accurate at the time of publishing based on currently available information. Use of the information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition. There are no warranties with regard to this information. Neither the author nor the publisher accepts any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, this information.