Symantec Backup Exec for Windows Server: RPC Interface Heap Overflow, Denial of Service

Symantec Backup Exec for Windows Servers is vulnerable to a denial of service attack (DoS) from specifically formatted calls to a registered RPC interface

Severity
High

Affected Products

NOTE: ONLY the products and versions listed above are affected by these issues. This issue impacts the server only. Client remote agents are NOT affected by this issue.

Product versions prior to those listed above are NOT supported. Customers running legacy product versions should upgrade and apply available updates

Details
IDefense, notified Symantec of a DoS identified in one of the RPC interfaces in Symantec Backup Exec for Window Servers. The DoS occurs due to improper validation and subsequent handling of user input. Successful exploitation requires access to the service port which in a normal installation would require the attacker to have authorized but non-privileged access to the network on which the targeted server resides to leverage network communications. A successful attack would normally result in termination of the targeted service however, there is a slight potential that a sufficiently designed and implemented attack could possibly result in arbitrary code execution on and elevated access to the targeted system.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) initiative has assigned CVE Candidate CVE-2007-3509 to this issue.
This issue is a candidate for inclusion in the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security problems.

SecurityFocus has assigned Bugtraq ID BID 23897 to this issue for inclusion in the SecurityFocus vulnerability database

Symantec response
Symantec engineers did an in-depth review of the reported issue and related file functionality to further enhance the overall security of the Symantec Backup Exec product. Symantec engineers have addressed this issue in all currently supported versions of the identified products. Security updates are available for all supported products.

Symantec strongly recommends all customers apply the latest security update as indicated for their supported product versions to protect against threats of this nature.

Symantec knows of no exploitation of or adverse customer impact from these issues.

The patches listed above for affected products are available from the following location:
http://support.veritas.com/docs/289283

Best Practices
As part of normal best practices, Symantec recommends:

• Restrict access to administration or management systems to authorized privileged users
• Block remote access to all ports not essential for efficient operation
• Restrict remote access, if required, to trusted/authorized systems only
• Remove/disable unnecessary accounts or restrict access according to security policy as required
• Run under the principle of least privilege where possible
• Keep all operating systems and applications updated with the latest vendor patches
• Follow a multi-layered approach to security. Run both firewall and antivirus applications, at a minimum, to provide multiple points of detection and protection to both inbound and outbound threats
• Deploy network intrusion detection systems to monitor network traffic for signs of anomalous or suspicious activity. This may aid in detection of attacks or malicious activity related to exploitation of latest vulnerabilities

Symantec would like to thank iDefense who reported this finding from an anonymous finder and coordinated closely with Symantec as we resolved the issue.

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