AIX infod Vulnerability

BID:370

Info

AIX infod Vulnerability

Bugtraq ID: 370
Class: Origin Validation Error
CVE:
Remote: No
Local: Yes
Published: Nov 12 1998 12:00AM
Updated: Nov 12 1998 12:00AM
Credit: This vulnerability was posted to the Bugtraq mailing list by Repent Security Inc. (RSI) on November 12, 1998.
Vulnerable: IBM AIX 4.3
IBM AIX 4.2.1
IBM AIX 4.2
IBM AIX 4.1.5
IBM AIX 4.1.4
IBM AIX 4.1.3
IBM AIX 4.1.2
IBM AIX 4.1.1
IBM AIX 4.1
IBM AIX 3.2.5
Not Vulnerable:

Discussion

AIX infod Vulnerability

Certain versions of AIX ship with an Information Daemon, infod. This program is designed to provide information about the OS and installed ancilliary programs. The daemon which runs as root, does not check credentials which are passed to it. This allows users to pass requests with arbitrary UID's. If a user passes infod a request as root, they can goto the default options menu and change the printer command line to an alternate binary such as /bin/sh that gives privileges to the account the session was spawned under.

Exploit / POC

AIX infod Vulnerability

x

Solution / Fix

AIX infod Vulnerability

Solution:
IBM has made the following APAR's available:

AIX 3.2.x: upgrade to version 4
AIX 4.1.x: IX84640
AIX 4.2.x: IX84641
AIX 4.3.x: IX84642

The RSI Advisory offered the following temporary solution:

Until the fixes can be applied, the infod daemon should be disabled. Run the following commands as root:

# stopsrc -s infod
# rmitab infod
# chown root.system /usr/lpp/info/bin/infod
# chmod 0 /usr/lpp/info/bin/infod

References

AIX infod Vulnerability

References:

© CVE.report 2026

Use of this information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition. There are NO warranties, implied or otherwise, with regard to this information or its use. Any use of this information is at the user's risk. It is the responsibility of user to evaluate the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information, opinion, advice or other content. EACH USER WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY consequences of his or her direct or indirect use of this web site. ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. This site will NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT or any other kind of loss.

CVE, CWE, and OVAL are registred trademarks of The MITRE Corporation and the authoritative source of CVE content is MITRE's CVE web site. This site includes MITRE data granted under the following license.

Free CVE JSON API cve.report/api

CVE.report and Source URL Uptime Status status.cve.report