Vulnerability Note VU#678150

Apple Mac OS X "at" utilities fail to drop privileges properly

Overview

Apple's Mac OS X operating system may allow local privilege escalation in family of "at" commands.

I. Description

Mac OS X includes the "at" family of commands in order to schedule tasks. However, a flaw in these commands results in the commands not dropping privileges correctly. This may allow a malicious local user to run commands with additional privileges, read or remove protected files, or gain other unintended access.

The affected commands include: at, atq, atrm, atrun, and batch.

II. Impact

These commands are disabled by default in Mac OS X. If they have been enabled, a malicious local user may gain additional privileges including the ability to remove or read protected files, or run programs with additional privileges.

III. Solution

Apply a patch

Apple advises all users to apply Apple Security Update 2005-001, as it fixes this flaw and other critical security flaws.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
Apple Computer Inc.	Vulnerable	27-Jan-2005

References

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300770
http://lists.apple.com/archives/security-announce/2005/Jan/msg00001.html
http://secunia.com/advisories/14005/
http://www.immunitysec.com/resources-advisories.shtml
http://www.immunitysec.com/downloads/nukido.pdf

Credit

Thanks to Apple Product Security for reporting this vulnerability. Apple in turn thanks Kevin Finisterre of Immunity, Inc. for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Ken MacInnis.

Other Information

Date Public:	2005-01-18
Date First Published:	2005-01-27
Date Last Updated:	2005-01-28
CERT Advisory:
CVE-ID(s):	CAN-2005-0125
NVD-ID(s):	CAN-2005-0125
US-CERT Technical Alerts:
Metric:	8.10
Document Revision:	14

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