SUMMARY

Symantec’s Ghost Explorer Utility, a standalone utility tool that ships with Symantec Ghost Solutions Suite (GSS) and Symantec Deployment Solution (DS) is susceptible to an out-of-bounds array indexing vulnerability that could result in an application denial of service or possibly access to unauthorized data from adjacent arrays.

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

NOTE: This vulnerability only impacts the optional Ghost Explorer Utility shipped, but not installed by default, with these products. It does not allow unauthorized access to or exposure of either GSS or DS or the underlying operating system.

ISSUES

MITIGATION

Details

Symantec Ghost Explorer, ghostexp.exe, is a stand-alone utility tool that ships with the Symantec Ghost Solution Suite and Symantec Deployment Solution as an option that can be installed separately if required. The Symantec Ghost Explorer utility is used to view the contents of a ghost image file. The utility provides addition or deletion of files to or from a ghost image file. Symantec Ghost Explorer can be invoked from the using application in the case of DS if installed, or run as a stand-alone tool by users who have chosen to install it.

Symantec was notified of an out-of-bounds array indexing issue in the Ghost Explorer utility byte arrays as a result of insufficient boundary checks. This failure to properly terminate indexing could potentially result in the application crashing or possibly allow unauthorized access to data in adjacent arrays.

Symantec Response

Symantec engineers verified the reported issue and have released updates for both versions of the utility, the version shipping with GSS 3.0 and the version shipping with DS 7.6.

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

Update information

Instructions to download Symantec Ghost Explorer patch GSS 3.0 HF2, 12.0.0.8010, will be available through Symantec File Connect. DS 7.6 HF4, 12.0.0.7045, will be available through the Symantec Installation Manager for Symantec IT Management System (ITMS).

Best Practices

As part of normal best practices, Symantec h3ly 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 thanks Steven Seeley of Source Incite working with HP's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) for submitting this issue. Symantec further thanks ZDI for working with us as we address it.

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.