SUMMARY

Symantec PGP and Symantec Encryption Desktop client has an unquoted search path in RDDService.  This could provide a non-privileged local user the ability to successfully insert arbitrary code in the root path. 

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

ADDITIONAL PRODUCT INFORMATION

Products Not Affected

ISSUES

MITIGATION

Details

Symantec was notified of an unquoted search path issue impacting the RDDService deployed in Symantec PGP and Encryption Desktop clients.  An authorized but non-privileged local user could potentially leverage this to execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges on the system.  A successful attempt would require the local user to be able to insert their code in the system root path undetected by the OS or other security applications where it could potentially be executed during application startup or reboot.  If successful, the local user's code would execute with the elevated privileges of the application.

Symantec Response
The vulnerable RDDService is no longer used in Symantec Encryption Desktop.  Symantec engineers have removed this service from Symantec Encryption Desktop 10.3.0 MP3 and later releases.  Symantec recommends upgrading to the latest version of Symantec Encryption Desktop.

Symantec is not aware of exploitation of or adverse customer impact from this issue.

Update Information

Updates are available through customer's normal download locations.

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 credits Sean McCarthy - NCC Group, http://www.nccgroup.com, for reporting this issue and working with us.

REFERENCES

BID: Security Focus, http://www.securityfocus.com, has assigned a Bugtraq ID (BID) to this issue for inclusion in the Security Focus vulnerability database.

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

REVISION

8/2/2013 – updated the affected version of 10.3.0 to all builds prior to 10.3.0 MP3 and added 10.3.0 MP3 or later to the solution