ISC INN inndstart pathrun Vulnerability

BID:254

Info

ISC INN inndstart pathrun Vulnerability

Bugtraq ID: 254
Class: Access Validation Error
CVE:
Remote: No
Local: Yes
Published: May 11 1999 12:00AM
Updated: May 11 1999 12:00AM
Credit: This vulnerability was published in the BUGTRAQ mailing list by Forrest J. Cavalier III <[email protected]>.
Vulnerable: ISC INN 2.2
ISC INN 2.1
ISC INN 2.0
Not Vulnerable: ISC INN 1.7.2
ISC INN 1.7

Discussion

ISC INN inndstart pathrun Vulnerability

It is possibly for the news user to fool the inndstart program such that is does not drop root privileges and then executes an arbitrary program as root.

Inndstart is a suid root wrapper program whose purpose is to bind to a privileged port, change its user id to that of the "news" user, and the execute the "innd" deamon. inndstart determines the uid and gid it should change to by examining the ownership of a directory normally owned by the user "news" and group "news". The directory that is examined can be changed by editing the "pathrun" parameter in the "inn.conf" configuration file.

By specifying a directory with root ownership inndstart can be made to execute innd as root. The are several ways in which you can then make innd execute arbitrary programs as root.

Exploit / POC

ISC INN inndstart pathrun Vulnerability

Currently the SecurityFocus staff are not aware of any exploits for this issue. If you feel we are in error or are aware of more recent information, please mail us at: [email protected].

Solution / Fix

ISC INN inndstart pathrun Vulnerability

Solution:
Modify the source file innd/inndstart.c to use a hard coded pathrun, instead of the structure member innconf->pathrun.

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