Symantec Altiris Deployment Solution Clear Text Password

1152

06 March 2020

10 April 2008

CLOSED

LOW

SUMMARY

 

Symantec’s Altiris Deployment Solution stores the Deployment Solution Agent (AClient) password in clear text in system memory.

Severity

Low
Remote Access No
Local Access Yes
Authentication Required Yes
Exploit publicly available No

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

 

Affected Products

Product Version Build Solution(s)
Altiris Deployment Solution 6.8.x All 6.9.164

ISSUES

 

Details

Information Risk Management Plc reported that Symantec’s Altiris Deployment Solution stores the AClient password in system memory. A non-privileged local user with authorized access on the targeted system could potentially dump the system memory for AClient.exe and recover the password. The recovered password could then be used to gain access to the local agent admin interface. A successful attack could potentially allow code of the attacker’s choice to be run with system level privileges on the targeted system.

SecurityFocus, http://www.securityfocus.com, has assigned a Bugtraq ID (BID) to this issue for inclusion in the SecurityFocus vulnerability database. The BID assigned is 28707 which can be found at http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/28707

A CVE Candidate name will be requested from the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) initiative for this issue. This advisory will be revised accordingly upon receipt of the CVE Candidate name. This issue is a candidate for inclusion in the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security problems.

MITIGATION

 

Symantec Response

Symantec engineers have verified and released an update to resolve this issue.

Upgrade to at least version 6.9.164 as follows:
  • Enter your email address.
  • Select "Deployment Solution for Clients 6.9" from the drop-down box
  • Click "Submit"
  • Accept the "End User License Agreement"
  • Click on "Deployment Solution for Clients 6.9" to download a zip file containing the Deployment Solution update.
  • Unzip the update package and double-click on Altiris_DeploymentSolutionWin_6_9.exe.
  • Follow the installation instructions

Best Practices

As part of normal best practices, Symantec strongly recommends:
  • Restrict access to administration or management systems to privileged users.
  • Restrict remote access, if required, to trusted/authorized systems only.
  • Run under the principle of least privilege where possible to limit the impact of exploit by threats.
  • Keep all operating systems and applications updated with the latest vendor patches.
  • Follow a multi-layered approach to security. Run both firewall and anti-malware applications, at a minimum, to provide multiple points of detection and protection to both inbound and outbound threats.
  • Deploy network and host-based 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 latent vulnerabilities

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

Symantec would like to thank Mazin Faour with Information Risk Management for reporting this issue and providing full coordination while Symantec resolved it.