Vulnerability Note VU#356070

Apple Terminal fails to properly sanitize input for "x-man-page" URI

Overview

Apple Terminal on Mac OS X fails to sanitize x-man-page URIs, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary commands.

I. Description

Mac OS X 10.3 includes a URI handler called x-man-page. It causes Apple Terminal to display a man page by using a URI of this form: x-man-page://command. Applications such as Safari can link to x-man-page resources.

Apple Terminal fails to sanitize input to the x-man-page URI handler. Escape characters embedded in the x-man-page URI could cause commands to be executed in the Terminal session.

II. Impact

By convincing a user to view an HTML document (e.g., a web page or HTML email message), an attacker could execute arbitrary commands or code with the privileges of the user. The attacker could take any action as the user. If the user has administrative privileges, the attacker could take complete control of the user's system.

III. Solution

Apply a patch

Apple advises all users to apply Apple Security Update 2005-005, as it fixes this flaw and other critical security flaws.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Updated
Apple Computer Inc.	Vulnerable	6-May-2005

References

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301528
http://remahl.se/david/vuln/011/
http://secunia.com/advisories/15227/
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/13502/
http://www.osvdb.org/displayvuln.php?osvdb_id=16084

Credit

Thanks to David Remahl for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Will Dormann.

Other Information

Date Public	05/03/2005
Date First Published	05/06/2005 03:50:08 PM
Date Last Updated	05/16/2005
CERT Advisory
CVE Name	CAN-2005-1342
US-CERT Technical Alerts
Metric	22.31
Document Revision	9

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