Remote Code Execution Hole Found In Snort

Palljon1123 writes "A stack-based buffer overflow in the Snort intrusion detection system could leave government and enterprise installations vulnerable to remote unauthenticated code execution attacks. The flaw, found by researchers at IBM's ISS X-Force, affects the Snort DCE/RPC preprocessor and could be used to execute code with the same privileges (usually root or SYSTEM) as the Snort binary. No user action is required." Sourcefire has an update to fix the vulnerability in versions 2.6.1, 2.6.1.1, and 2.6.1.2; Heise Security spells out the workaround for the 2.7.0 beta version.

Comments

The very definition of irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Something designed to make your network secure turning out to be a security risk...

Remote, what about stealth installations

[Gothmolly]

Its a remote overflow, does it work if the sensor doesn't have an IP address? If it merely sees the right pattern of 1s and 0s on the wire, it roots itself? Article sadly lacking detail.

Re:Remote, what about stealth installations

[Anonymous Coward]

To reply to myself:
    From snort 2.6:

-g Run Snort as group ID after initialization.
                        This switch allows Snort to drop root privileges after
                        it's initialization phase has completed as a security
                        measure.

That could be very helpful if the group is nobody or another group not allowed to mess with the rest of the system. Once again, it has to be used properly though.

Re:Remote, what about stealth installations

[JensenDied]

Isn't this why we use chroot for things like this?

Re:Remote, what about stealth installations

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. This is also another reason to implement a passive only tap for your snort box. In that situation the worse case scenario is your sensor sniffs some traffic that causes it to get compromised and it stops working or at least not correctly. Even if somehow a worm gets injected into the system from this passive sniffing it can't go anywhere. Unless your dumb enough to have your IDS machines hooked up to your internal network via another NIC. Keep your IDS sensors passive and isolated!!!

Why this vulnerability?

[madsheep]

It is interesting this vulnerability makes it into Slashdot where other [past Snort/Sourcefire] vulnerabilities of the same magnitude have not. It would definitely be time to upgrade but the number of people running 2.6.1, 2.6.1.1, 2.6.1.2 and 2.7.0 beta 1 are probably not as wide spread as 2.4.x, 2.6.0, and probably earlier versions. Luckily this vulnerability has been identified by a bunch of good researchers and the potential exploit probably hasn't been developed by anyone malicious. The real fear here of course is not just that *a box* might get rooted.. it's that a box running Snort/Sourcefire might get rooted. Generally this box will of course sit inline on the network or have sort of span/mirror port running to it. Whenever an IDS, switch, or router compromise is possible it can truly spell bad news. However, I'd say in this case it's not likely that a whole lot would happen even if an exploit should be developed.

Re:Why this vulnerability?

[tiny69]

Previous story submitters didn't allude to a conspiracy that the government is getting 0wn3d.

Re:Silly Hackers

[Lord Ender]

People who run linux don't have any money to steal.

Every company large enough to need a Security team (you know, the companies with the most money) is going to be running Linux. Nearly all the best infosec tools are Linux apps. I know you are likely going for Colbert-esque humor here, but the fact is that companies that run Snort on Linux probably have much MORE money to steal, on average, than companies that do not.