Last revised: January 6, 1998
Updated URLs for Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A complete revision history is at the end of this file.
The CERT Coordination Center has received reports that a buffer overflow condition exists in some implementations of xlock. This vulnerability makes it possible for local users (users with access to an account on the system) to execute arbitrary programs as a privileged user.
Exploitation information involving this vulnerability has been made publicly available.
If your system is vulnerable, the CERT/CC team recommends installing a patch from your vendor. If you are not certain whether your system is vulnerable or if you know that your system is vulnerable and you cannot add a patch immediately, we urge you to apply the workaround described in Section III.B.
We will update this advisory as we receive additional information. Please check our advisory files regularly for updates that relate to your site.
I. Description
xlock is a program that allows a user to "lock" an X terminal. A buffer overflow condition exists in some implementations of xlock. It is possible attain unauthorized access to a system by engineering a particular environment and calling a vulnerable version of xlock that has setuid or setgid bits set. Information about vulnerable versions must be obtained from vendors. Some vendor information can be found in Appendix A of this advisory.Exploitation information involving this vulnerability has been made publicly available.
Note that this problem is different from that discussed in CERT Advisory
CA-97.11.libXt.
II. Impact
Local users are able to execute arbitrary programs as a privileged user without authorization.III. Solution
Install a patch from your vendor as described in Solution A. If you are not certain whether your system is vulnerable or if you know that your system is vulnerable and you cannot install a patch immediately, we recommend Solution B.A. Obtain and install a patch for this problem.
Below is a list of vendors who have provided information about xlock. Details are in Appendix A of this advisory; we will update the appendix as we receive more information. If your vendor's name is not on this list, the CERT/CC did not hear from that vendor. Please contact your vendor directly.Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI)
Cray Research - A Silicon Graphics Company
Data General Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
FreeBSD, Inc.
Hewlett-Packard Company
IBM Corporation
LINUX
NEC Corporation
The Open Group [This group distributes the publicly available software
that was formerly distributed by X Consortium]
Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI)
Solbourne
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
B. We recommend the following workaround if you are not certain whether your system is vulnerable or if you know that your system is vulnerable and you cannot install a patch immediately.
1. Find and disable any copies of xlock that exist on your system and that have the setuid or setgid bits set.
2. Install a version of xlock known to be immune to this vulnerability.
One such supported tool is xlockmore. The latest version of this tool is 4.02, and you should ensure that this is the version you are using. This utility can be obtained from the following site:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/xlockmore-4.02.tar.gz
MD5 (xlockmore-4.02.tar.gz) = c158e6b4b99b3cff4b52b39219dbfe0e
You can also obtain this version from mirror sites. A list of these sites will be displayed if you are not able to access the above archive due to load.
Appendix A - Vendor Information
Below is a list of the vendors who have provided information for this advisory. We will update this appendix as we receive additional information. If you do not see your vendor's name, the CERT/CC did not hear from that vendor. Please contact the vendor directly.Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI)
BSD/OS 2.1 is vulnerable to the xlock vulnerability. BSDI recommends that 2.1 customers either upgrade to BSD/OS 3.0 or remove the setuid permission from /usr/X11/bin/xlock.Cray Research - A Silicon Graphics Company
Cray Research does not include xlock in its X Window releases, so we are not at risk on the xlock buffer overflow problem.Data General Corporation
The xlock sources (xlockmore-3.7) that DG includes in its contributed software package have been modified to remove this vulnerability. These will be available when release 8 comes out. We also recommend that our customers who have the current version should change the sprintf calls in resource.c to snprintf calls, rebuild and reinstall the package.Digital Equipment Corporation
This reported problem is not present for Digital's ULTRIX or Digital UNIX Operating Systems Software.FreeBSD, Inc.
The xlockmore version we ship in our ports collection is vulnerable in all shipped releases. The port in FreeBSD-current is fixed. Solution is to install the latest xlockmore version (4.02).Hewlett-Packard Company
We ship an suid root program vuelock that is based on xlock. It does have the vulnerability.The only workaround is to remove the executable, the patch is "in process".
IBM Corporation
AIX is vulnerable to the conditions described in this advisory. The following APARs will be released soon:AIX 3.2 : APAR IX68189
AIX 4.1 : APAR IX68190
AIX 4.2 : APAR IX68191
IBM and AIX are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation.
LINUX
Red Hat:Not vulnerable
Caldera:
Not vulnerable
Debian:
An updated package is on the Debian site
SuSE:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/SuSE-Linux/suse_update/S.u.S.E.-4.4.1/xap1/xlock
And in general the new Xlockmore release fixes the problems.
NEC Corporation
| UX/4800 | Not vulnerable for all versions. |
| EWS-UX/V(Rel4.2MP | Not vulnerable for all versions. |
| EWS-UX/V(Rel4.2) | Not vulnerable for all versions. |
| UP-UX/V(Rel4.2MP) | Not vulnerable for all versions. |
The Open Group
Publicly available software that was formerly distributed by the X Consortium -Not vulnerable.
Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI)
Patch information can be found in SGI advisory 19970502-02-PX, available from ftp://sgigate.sgi.com/security/Solbourne
Solbourne is not vulnerable to this attack.Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Bulletin Number: #00150Date: August 12, 1997
Title: Vulnerability in xlock
Vulnerable: SunOS versions 5.5.1, 5.5.1_x86, 5.5, 5.5_x86, 5.4, 5.4_x86, 5.3, 4.1.4, and 4.1.3_U1
The vulnerability is fixed in the upcoming release of Solaris.
Patches are available to all Sun customers via World Wide Web at:
ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches.html
Customers with Sun support contracts can also obtain patches from local Sun answer centers and SunSITEs worldwide.
Sun security bulletins are available via World Wide Web at:
http://sunsolve.Sun.COM/pub-cgi/us/secbul.pl
The CERT Coordination Center thanks David Hedley for reporting the original problem and Kaleb Keithley at The Open Group for his support in the development of this advisory.
Copyright 1997 Carnegie Mellon University.
Revision History
Jan. 06, 1999 Updated URLs for Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sep. 30, 1997 Updated copyright statement Aug. 15, 1997 Appendix A - updated information for Sun Microsystems, Inc. July 21, 1997 Appendix A - added information for SGI. June 4, 1997 Appendix A - updated vendor information for BSDI.