[UNIX] Oracle File Overwrite Security Vulnerability

From: support@securiteam.com
Date: 10/28/01 

From: support@securiteam.com
To: list@securiteam.com
Subject: [UNIX] Oracle File Overwrite Security Vulnerability
Message-Id: <20011028220051.8EE49138BF@mail.der-keiler.de>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 23:00:51 +0100 (CET)

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  Oracle File Overwrite Security Vulnerability
------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY

There is a potential security vulnerability associated with the Oracle
binary on several UNIX platforms. A non-privileged user (such as "nobody")
invokes the oracle executable: as a result of the presence of the SETUID
bit, the executable can be forced to write to a trace file in
ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/log directory and thereby overwrite existing log files
or create new (unauthorized) files. The non-privileged user can also point
the environment variable, ORACLE_HOME, to an arbitrary directory in the
operating system and thereby corrupt other files as well.

This article describes the workaround for this problem. For more
information about this original problem, see our previous post:
 < http://www.securiteam.com/exploits/6I00P0K01G.html> Linux Oracle
security vulnerability (ORACLE_HOME)

DETAILS

Vulnerable systems:
All Oracle database server releases (8.0.x, 8.1.x, and 9.0.1)

Workaround:
Change the file permissions on the oracle executable as follows:
% chmod o-x oracle

Notes:
The workaround suggested above will permit only the owner of the oracle
executable and users defined in the OS DBA group to run the oracle
executable directly. With the execute permissions for "others" removed,
other users cannot connect to an Oracle database server using the BEQ
driver. If the BEQ driver is being used to connect to an Oracle database,
a client program (such as SQLPLUS) will fork its processes and try to
execute the oracle executable directly. This operation will fail because
such a client program will run with the OS user's privileges that no
longer have execution permission on the oracle executable. To avoid this
problem, local users must connect to an Oracle database using the IPC
driver that makes it possible to connect to a TNS listener listening on an
Oracle database. The TNS listener will need to be started by a user that
has execution permissions on the oracle executable.

Patches:
The potential security vulnerability will be code-fixed in the next
release of the Oracle database server that is Oracle9i, Release 2, only.
All other releases of the Oracle database (8.0.x, 8.1.x, and 9.0.1) must
use follow the workarounds specified above to circumvent the potential
security vulnerability.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The information has been provided by <mailto:secalert_us@oracle.com>
Oracle Security Alerts.

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