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Alert A-02005C - Vulnerabilita' in Apache


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   Alert ID: A-02005C

   Data di creazione: Tue Jun 18 15:30:45 MEST 2002

   Titolo: Denial of service in Apache v. 1.x e 2.x

   Gravita': alta

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E' stata segnalata la possibilita' di effettuare attacchi di tipo 
"denial of service" su alcune versioni del web server Apache, con la 
possibilita' anche di eseguire codice arbitrario sulla macchina remota.
Attualmente non risulta rilasciata ancora nessuna patch da parte di 
Apache Software Foundation e pertanto, in attesa che venga risolto il 
problema, puo' essere opportuno per lo meno accertarsi che il web server 
sia eseguito con i privilegi minimi necessari.
Tutte le versioni 1.3 (inclusa la 1.3.24) e 2 (inclusa la 2.0.36) 
presentano questo problema.
Allego il testo originale dell'advisory di Apache Software Foundation:

Introduction:

While testing for Oracle vulnerabilities, Mark Litchfield discovered a 
denial of service attack for Apache on Windows.  Investigation by the 
Apache Software Foundation showed that this issue has a wider scope, 
which on some platforms results in a denial of service vulnerability, 
while on some other platforms presents a potential a remote exploit 
vulnerability.

We were also notified today by ISS that they had published the same 
issue which has forced the early release of this advisory.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has 
assigned the name CAN-2002-0392 to this issue.

Description:

Versions of the Apache web server up to and including 1.3.24 and 2.0 up 
to and including 2.0.36 and 2.0.36-dev versions contain a bug in the 
routines which deal with invalid requests which are encoded using 
chunked encoding.  This bug can be triggered remotely by sending a 
carefully crafted invalid request. This functionality is enabled by default.

In most cases the outcome of the invalid request is that the child 
process dealing with the request will terminate.  At the least, this 
could help a remote attacker launch a denial of service attack as the 
parent process will eventually have to replace the terminated child 
process and starting new children uses non-trivial amounts of resources.

On the Windows and Netware platforms, Apache runs one multithreaded 
child process to service requests.  The teardown and subsequent setup 
time to replace the lost child process presents a significant 
interruption of service.  As the Windows and Netware ports create a new 
process and reread the configuration, rather than fork a child process, 
this delay is much more pronounced than on other platforms.

In Apache 2.0 the error condition is correctly detected, so it will not 
allow an attacker to execure arbitrary code on the server. However 
platforms could be using a multithreaded model of multiple concurrent 
requests per child process (although the default preference remains 
multiple processes with a single thread and request per process, and 
most multithreaded models continue to create multiple child processes). 
  Using any multithreaded model, all concurrent requests currently 
served by the affected child process will be lost.

In Apache 1.3 the issue causes a stack overflow.  Due to the nature of 
the overflow on 32-bit Unix platforms this will cause a segmentation 
violation and the child will terminate.  However on 64-bit platforms the 
overflow can be controlled and so for platforms that store return 
addresses on the stack it is likely that it is further exploitable. This 
could allow arbitrary code to be run on the server as the user the 
Apache children are set to run as.

We have been made aware that Apache 1.3 on Windows is exploitable in 
this way.

Please note that the patch provided by ISS does not correct this 
vulnerability.

The Apache Software Foundation are currently working on new releases 
that fix this issue, please see http://httpd.apache.org/ for updated
versions.


Ulteriori informazioni possono essere reperite agli URL:
http://httpd.apache.org/
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2002-17.html


Appendice

GARR-CERT Home Page:  http://www.cert.garr.it

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