SUMMARY

Symantec was notified of a improper message handling procedures in the Intel Alert Management System (AMS2) that can be used to send arbitrary messages or kill the Intel Alert Handler service.

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

ISSUES

Severity

Medium 
CVSS 2 Base Score: 6.79 
Impact 10.0     Exploitability 3.1 

CVSS 2 Base Vector: AV:A/AC:H/Au:S/C:N/I:P/A:C 

Exploit Publicly Available: No

MITIGATION

Details

The Intel Alert Management System (AMS2) is used in Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition Server (SAV) ,Symantec System Center(SSC), and Symantec Quarantine Server. AMS2 listens on TCP Port 38292 and allows Administrators to send messages (i.e. email) if a user-specified event occurs. 

Symantec was notified of multiple vulnerabilities in AMS2 that make it is possible to send specially-crafted AMS2 messages to the target machine. The results can allow for arbitrary events (launching a program, sending an email) or even shutdown the service through a DOS. The successful exploitation of this vulnerability could result in potential compromise of or a Denial of Service in the affected products. 

AMS2 has not been included in a default install of SAV Server or SSC since version 10.0. AMS2 was included in a default install of Quarantine Server prior to SEP 11.0 MR3. 

This service is not responsible for any Antivirus or security processes, it simply allows the administrator to trigger messages.

Symantec Response

Symantec engineers have verified these issues and released an update to address them. Symantec customers should update to the latest maintenance release available through normal update procedures. 

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

Mitigations

Symantec recommends upgrading any vulnerable versions of SAVCE Server or Symantec System Center to SAVCE 10.1 MR10. Vulnerable versions of Quarantine Server 3.5 should be upgraded to SAVCE 10.1 MR10. Vulnerable versions of Quarantine Server 3.6 should be upgraded to SEP 11.0 MR3. SEP users running a version of Quarantine Server from SEP 11.x later than MR2 are not vulnerable. Reporting has replaced AMS2 as the recommended method of alerting. Symantec recommends that customers who are still using AMS2 switch to Reporting to manage alerts in their environments. 

If the customer is unable to switch to Reporting immediately or upgrade to a non-vulnerable version then Symantec recommends that the customer either disable AMS2 as a temporary mitigation or completely uninstall AMS2. 

As an additional mitigation, Symantec recommends blocking port 38292 in the corporate environment. This will effectively disable the alert service from sending or receiving messages.

Best Practices

As part of normal best practice, Symantec recommends the following: 

• 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 the finders of these issues: 

Junaid Bohio of Vulnerability Research Team,Telus Security Labs 
An anonymous finder through Tippingpoint’s Zero Day Initiative(ZDI) 
Nahuel Riva of Core Security Technologies

REFERENCES

BID: SecurityFocus (http://www.securityfocus.com) has assigned Bugtraq ID(BID) 45935 to these vulnerabilities. 

CVE: These issue are candidates for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security problems. CVE-2010-0111 has been assigned to these vulnerabilities