SUMMARY

Symantec's Messaging Gateway 9.5.x management console is susceptible to stored cross-site scripting (XSS) issues found in some of the administrative interface pages.   Successful exploitation could result in potential unauthorized privileged access to the management console.

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

NOTE:  Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5.x is End of Life.  Users should be migrating away from this release to the latest Symantec Messaging Gateway 10.x release

ADDITIONAL PRODUCT INFORMATION

Product(s) Not Affected

ISSUES

MITIGATION

Details

Symantec was notified of stored XSS issues impacting Symantec's Messaging Gateway 9.5.x management console. 

Multiple stored XSS issues exist in the interface pages used to manage the application as a result of insufficient validation/sanitation of user input.  Successfully targeting of these vulnerabilities does require administrator level access on the management console.  A malicious user would require network access as well as access to an authorized active session on the web-based management console. 

In a typical installation the Symantec Messaging Gateway management interface should not be accessible external to the network environment.  Administrative systems used to manage Messaging Gateway should not be used to browse external web sites.  These restrictions greatly reduce exposure to external attempts against this type of issue.

However, an authorized but non-privileged network malicious user or an external attacker able to successfully leverage required access to a logged-on management console account could potentially inject arbitrary scripts into these vulnerable pages.  

Although a low probability of success, a remote attacker could potentially entice a privileged user to visit a malicious web site.  In this scenario the attacker could attempt to target these stored xss issues by submitting forged requests on behalf of the authorized user.

Symantec Response

Symantec engineers verified these issues in Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5.x. They further confirmed that Symantec Messaging Gateway 10.x is not impacted.  

Symantec Messaging Gateway 9.5.x is an end-of-life product.  Symantec strongly recommends Symantec Messaging Gateway customers update to the latest release of Symantec Messaging Gateway 10.x.  Symantec knows of no exploitation of or adverse customer impact from this issue.

Symantec Messaging Gateway 10.0.1 is currently available through normal update channels.

Best Practices

• As part of normal best practices, Symantec strongly recommends:
• Restrict access to administration or management systems to privileged users.
• Disable remote access if not required or restrict it to trusted/authorized systems only.
• Where possible, limit exposure of application and web interfaces to trusted/internal networks only.
• 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 Puneeth Kumar R.  for reporting these issues to us and coordinating with us as we resolved them. 

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

REVISION

5/10/2013 - Corrected affected product name.  Symantec Brightmail Gateway was rebranded Symantec Messaging Gateway with the 9.5.x release.