Symantec Norton Antivirus LiveUpdate Plaintext Credentials Vulnerability

Bugtraq ID:	4170
Class:	Design Error
CVE:	CVE-2002-0344
Remote:	No
Local:	Yes
Published:	Feb 25 2002 12:00AM
Updated:	Jul 11 2009 10:56AM
Credit:	This issue was reported to BugTraq on February 25th, 2002 by "Javier Sanchez" <[email protected]>.
Vulnerable:	Symantec LiveUpdate 1.7 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2001 0 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2002 0 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition 7.6 Symantec LiveUpdate 1.6 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2001 0 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2002 0 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition 7.51 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition 7.5 Symantec LiveUpdate 1.5 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2001 0 Symantec LiveUpdate 1.4 + Symantec Norton AntiVirus 5.0
Not Vulnerable:

Symantec Norton Antivirus LiveUpdate Plaintext Credentials Vulnerability

Symantec Norton AntiVirus contains a feature called LiveUpdate. LiveUpdate is a process that checks for new virus definitions over the internet, downloads and installs them from a Symantec site. This process can either be scheduled or performed manually.

Authentication credentials for the LiveUpdate service are stored in plaintext in the Windows registry. It is possible for a local attacker or malicious users on client machines to gain access to this information.

This issue has been reported for LiveUpdate running with Symantec Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition. It is possible that other products which use the LiveUpdate service may also be affected by this vulnerability.

Symantec has reported that LiveUpdate 1.5 and 1.6 encrypt the username and
password by default. It is believed that this is not a LiveUpdate issue, it is an internal server issue when passing the username and password to the client system.

Symantec Norton Antivirus LiveUpdate Plaintext Credentials Vulnerability

The attacker may use regedit to search for the authentication credentials.

Symantec Norton Antivirus LiveUpdate Plaintext Credentials Vulnerability

References:

• Symantec Homepage (Symantec)
  
• Symantec Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition 7.x local LiveUpdate Server login in (Symantec)