Vulnerability Note VU#331694

Apple Mac OS X chpass/chfn/chsh utilities do not properly validate external programs

Overview

Apple Mac OS X Directory Service utilities use external programs insecurely, potentially allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary code.

I. Description

The OS X Directory Services have three utilities chpass, chfn, and chsh to update information in the user database, such as user name, password, shell, group affiliation, home directory, etc. When these utilities are executed, certain code paths may invoke separate, external programs in an insecure manner. A local attacker may be able to manipulate the calls to external programs made by chpass/chfn/chsh to execute arbitrary code.

Note that chpass, chfn, and chsh are the same utility. In addition, this utility can execute with administrative privileges, possibly root.

Please refer to Apple Security update 2005-005 for more information.

II. Impact

An attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code to gain elevated privileges, possibly root.

III. Solution

Apply Update

Apple has released Apple Security update 2005-005 to correct this issue.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
Apple Computer Inc.	Vulnerable	17-May-2005

References

http://secunia.com/advisories/15227/
http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/20376
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301528
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/
http://www.osvdb.org/16075

Credit

This vulnerability was reported by Apple Product Security.

This document was written by Jeff Gennari.

Other Information

Date Public:	2005-05-03
Date First Published:	2005-05-16
Date Last Updated:	2005-05-25
CERT Advisory:
CVE-ID(s):	CAN-2005-1335
NVD-ID(s):	CAN-2005-1335
US-CERT Technical Alerts:
Metric:	15.94
Document Revision:	97

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