[dba-Tech] Symantec anti-virus flaw hits 30 products

Jon Tydda Jon.Tydda at alcontrol.co.uk
Fri Feb 11 03:21:37 CST 2005


Sorry for the cross post, but I thought this was worth it...
 
Symantec anti-virus flaw hits 30 products
 
By John
<http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2005/02/10/symantec_
uberbug/> Leyden
Published Thursday 10th February 2005 11:26 GMT

A cross-platform flaw affecting many Symantec security products - both
consumer and enterprise - has been discovered. Users of Symantec's Norton
SystemWorks 2004, Norton SystemWorks 2004 (both Mac and Windows), Norton
AntiVirus 2004, corporate anti-virus apps and Brightmail anti-spam software
(among others) all need to apply patches following the discovery of the "
highly critical <http://secunia.com/advisories/14179/> " security bug. In
all 30 packages are affected.

The vulnerability stems from a flaw in an antivirus scanning component
(called the DEC2EXE parsing engine) involving the processing of UPX
compressed files. Maliciously constructed UPX files could be created to
cause a heap-based buffer overflow. This in turn makes it possible for
malicious hackers to inject hostile code onto vulnerable systems, allowing
them to be taken over by attackers.

Symantec said the vulnerable EC2EXE engine is no longer required to parse
compressed files. It had already planned to dispense with the component
across its product range and the discovery of vulnerability by security
tools vendor ISS has simply brought forward this process. Update details are
here <http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/security/Content/2005.02.08.html> . ISS's
alert is here <http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/alerts/id/187> . 

 

In case the links don't work, here they are: 

http://secunia.com/advisories/14179/ <http://secunia.com/advisories/14179/> 

http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/security/Content/2005.02.08.html
<http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/security/Content/2005.02.08.html> 

http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/alerts/id/187
<http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/alerts/id/187> 

 

Jon



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