Symantec LiveUpdate for Macintosh Local Privilege Escalation

1075

06 March 2020

19 October 2005

CLOSED

MEDIUM

SUMMARY

 

Risk Impact
Medium

Remote Access

No

Local Access

Yes

Authentication Required

Yes

Exploit publicly available

No

 

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

 

Product

Version

Build

Language

Solution

LiveUpdate for Macintosh

3.0.0

All

All

Live Update Patch

3.0.1

All

All

3.0.2

All

All

3.0.3

5

English

3.0.3

11

All

3.5.0

47

All

Norton AntiVirus

9.0.x

All

All

Norton AntiVirus

10.0.0

All

All

Norton AntiVirus

10.0.1

All

All

Norton Personal Firewall

3.0.x

All

All

Norton Personal Firewall

3.1.0

All

All

Norton Internet Security

3.0.x

All

All

Norton Utilities

8.0.x

All

All

Norton SystemWorks

3.0.x

All

All

ADDITIONAL PRODUCT INFORMATION

 

Not Affected Product(s)

Product

Version

Build

Language

Symantec AntiVirus for Macintosh

10

All

All

 

ISSUES

 

Details
Symantec LiveUpdate for Macintosh is partially implemented in the Java programming language. The interface to the java interpreter takes input from the LiveUpdate component as command line arguments and passes them to the Java interpreter. This interface is configured to run with System Administrative privileges (SUID). A local user can use the LiveUpdate Java interface to execute Java code with System Administrative rights.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) initiative has assigned CVE Candidate CVE-2005-2759 to this issue.

This issue is a candidate for inclusion in the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security problems.

MITIGATION

 

Symantec Response
A patch has been created and made available for all affected version of the product through Symantec LiveUpdate.

To perform a manual update using Symantec LiveUpdate, users should:

  • Open any installed Symantec product
  • Click on LiveUpdate in the toolbar
  • Run LiveUpdate until all available Symantec product updates are downloaded and installed

Symantec is not aware of any active attempts against or customers impacted by this issue.

As a part of normal best practices, users should keep vendor-supplied patches for all application software and operating systems up-to-date. Symantec strongly recommends any affected customers update their product immediately to protect against these types of threats.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

Symantec thanks iDefense, for notification of this issue and coordinating disclosure as it was resolved