J-Security Center

Title: Solaris snmpXdmid Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Severity: CRITICAL

Description:

Versions 2.6, 7, and 8 of Sun Microsystem's Solaris operating environment ship with service called 'snmpXdmid'.

SNMP and DMI are commonly used remote network and system management protocols. They allow administrators to view and set the properties of network devices and hosts in a standardized manner.

To bridge between the two different protocols, Sun Solaris ships with a daemon called 'snmpXdmid', the SNMP to DMI mapping daemon. This service is responsible for receiving DMI requests and translating them into SNMP and vice versa.

During its operation, snmpXdmid registers itself with RPC service 1000249, 'dmid'. Any received DMI events, or 'indications', are translated by snmpXdmid into SNMP traps. When a specific 'malformed' indication is received by the dmid service, a buffer overflow condition can be triggered.

The overflow occurs after snmpXdmid has received the indication and is translating it into an SNMP trap. The overflow is stack-based in nature and involves parts or all of a stack frame being overwritten with attacker-supplied data (from within the DMI request).

If sections of the stack frame, such as the return address, can be corrupted with attacker-supplied data then it may be possible for remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on the target server. Since the service is initiated by root, any code executed by an attacker would run with superuser privileges.

Note: As of April 19, 2001, there are at least three exploits "in the wild" and in active use on the Internet.

Affected Products:

  • Sun Solaris 2.6
  • Sun Solaris 2.6_x86
  • Sun Solaris 7.0
  • Sun Solaris 7.0_x86
  • Sun Solaris 8
  • Sun Solaris 8_x86

References:

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