Symantec Enterprise Firewall: Unexpected RealAudio Service Termination

Qualys, a leader in Managed Vulnerability Assessment, notified Symantec Corporation of a problem discovered when scanning the Symantec Enterprise Firewall with their web-based vulnerability assessment tool.

Risk
Medium

Products/Versions
Raptor Firewall 6.5 (Windows NT)
Raptor Firewall V6.5.3 (Solaris)
Symantec Enterprise Firewall 6.5.2 (Windows 2000 and NT)
Symantec Enterprise Firewall V7.0 (Solaris)
Symantec Enterprise Firewall 7.0 (Windows 2000 and NT)
VelociRaptor Model 500/700/1000
VelociRaptor Model 1100/1200/1300
Symantec Gateway Security 5110/5200/5300

While scanning the firewall with the Qualys tool, both the rad (RealAudio) and statsd (statistics) services unexpectedly terminated. This action produced Dr. Watson logs. Data sent by the scan caused the RealAudio service to write past the end of a buffer, corrupting memory. The statistics service, statsd, violated access as a result of this action. All other services continued running.

Symantec Response
If you are using any of the products listed above, Symantec recommends that you install the latest security hotfix, which is available through the Symantec Enterprise Support Web site: http://www.symantec.com/downloads/.

Technical Description
The RealAudio Proxy is written to process data in a buffer, assuming that the data follows the expected RealAudio protocol. The problem manifests itself when packets are sent to the RealAudio Proxy; these packets contain data that does not follow the RealAudio Protocol and depend on the type of sent data. In the event that this problem occurs, it would cause the firewall to restart the RealAudio Proxy. The hotfix resolves this problem by ignoring this erroneous type of data, which makes the process not require to be restarted by the firewall.

Symantec appreciates the support of Qualys Security Research Team in identifying the areas of concern to Symantec. For more information about the Qualys Security Research Team, visit their website at http://www.qualys.com or send email to research@qualys.com

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