Symantec Brightmail Gateway and Mail Security Appliance Cross-site Scripting and Elevation of Privil

SUMMARY

Symantec Brightmail Gateway's Control Center is susceptible to cross-site scripting and elevation of privilege vulnerabilities.

AFFECTED PRODUCTS

Product

|

Version

|

Solution(s)

—|—|—

Symantec Brightmail Gateway Appliance 8300

|

All prior to 8.0.1

|

Upgrade to 8.0.1 or later

Symantec Mail Security Appliance 8200/8300

|

All

ISSUES

Severity

Medium

Remote Access

|

Yes (Internal network only)

—|—

Local Access

|

No

Authentication Required

|

Yes

Exploit publicly available

|

No

MITIGATION

Details

Symantec was notified of cross-site scripting and elevation of privilege issues present in the Control Center, the web-based management console of Symantec's Brightmail Gateway and Symantec Mail Security Appliances. The Control Center fails to properly filter external client input from users authorized access to the console. Scripts used for administrative functions may be susceptible to malicious manipulation potentially allowing access to other users' sessions, unauthorized access to other systems on the internal network or unauthorized information disclosure.

In addition, some console functions could potentially be leveraged by an authorized but non-privileged Control Center user to gain unauthorized elevated access on the appliance.

Symantec Response

Symantec product engineers have released an update for these issues in all affected product versions. Symantec is not aware of any attempts to exploit these issues. However, we recommend that all customers upgrade to non-vulnerable versions to protect against potential attempts to exploit.

How to Obtain the Update

The upgrade is available through the Software Update function of Symantec Brightmail Gateway. It can also be downloaded from Symantec File Connect,
(https://fileconnect.symantec.com/LangSelection.jsp).

Mitigation

System administrators control access to the Control Center functionality through role-based administration. Symantec Mail Security and Brightmail Gateway appliance Administrators normally have the rights that could potentially be gained through exploiting these issues. However, in some environments users can be authorized limited access to Control Center functionality, e.g., a user may be allowed limited access to the Control Center to manage their personal quarantine messages. This could result in an increased internal threat through attempted exploitation of these issues by an authorized but non-privileged user.

If customers are unable to upgrade to the fixed version, 8.0.1, of Symantec Brightmail Gateway at this time, Symantec recommends ensuring Control Center access is restricted to privileged users until the upgrade can be applied.

Best Practices

As part of normal best practices, Symantec strongly recommends:

• Restrict access to administration or management systems to privileged users.
• Restrict remote access, if required, to trusted/authorized systems only.
• Run under the principle of least privilege where possible to limit the impact of exploit by threats.
• Keep all operating systems and applications updated with the latest vendor patches.
• Follow a multi-layered approach to security. Run both firewall and anti-malware applications, at a minimum, to provide multiple points of detection and protection to both inbound and outbound threats.
• Deploy network and host-based intrusion detection systems to monitor network traffic for signs of anomalous or suspicious activity. This may aid in detection of attacks or malicious activity related to exploitation of latent vulnerabilities

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Symantec would like to thank Dr. Marian Ventuneac, Perot Systems, Ireland, for reporting these issues and coordinating with us while Symantec resolved them.

REFERENCES

BID: Security Focus, http://www.securityfocus.com, has assigned a Bugtraq ID (BID) to these issues for inclusion in the Security Focus vulnerability database.
BID 34641 is assigned to the cross-site scripting issues
BID 34639 is assigned to the elevation of privilege issues

CVE: These issues are candidates for inclusion in the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security problems. The CVE initiative has assigned
CVE-2009-0063 to the cross-site scripting issues
CVE-2009-0064 to the elevation of privilege issues

REVISION

Updated Affected Product information to clarify affected products