SUMMARY

An arbitrary memory overwrite vulnerability exists in a Symantec Deployment Solution agent allowing a local and authorized malicious user to potentially elevate privileges on the local system.  This vulnerability applies to Windows XP (SP3) or Windows Server 2003 (SP2) only.

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

ISSUES

MITIGATION

Details

A Symantec Deployment Solution agent driver, AClient, is susceptible to a buffer overflow resulting from a malicious user with local access being able to potentially overwrite memory, possibly resulting in an escalation of privilege on the system. 

NOTE:   This issue can only be exploited on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as newer Windows operating systems have different verification methodologies and so are not impacted by this issue.

Successful exploitation could potentially allow a local user to gain unauthorized access to resources on the targeted system, interfere with communications between the client and server or, disrupt or modify the capability of the management server to effectively monitor and manage the client system.

Symantec Response
Symantec engineers have reviewed and validated this issue as impacting versions  of Deployment Solution 6.9 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 only. 

Symantec recommends customers disable use of Deployment Solution 6.9 AClient and enable the DAgent.

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

Mitigation Information

Please refer to Knowledge Base article, DOC7993, “Arbitrary Write Privilege Escalation in Altiris AClient agent” for more information.

Best Practices
As part of normal best practices, Symantec strongly recommends that customers:

•          Restrict access of 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 thanks Parvez Anwar (@parvezghh) for reporting this issue and for working with us as we resolved the issue.

REFERENCES

BID: 71727

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