Lotus Domino Web Server Host/Location Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

NGSSoftware Insight Security Research Advisory

Name: Lotus Domino Web Server Host/Location Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Systems Affected: Release 6.0

Severity: Critical Risk

Category: Remote System Buffer Overrun

Vendor URL: http://www.lotus.com

Author: Mark Litchfield (mark@ngssoftware.com)

Date: 17th February 2003

Advisory number: #NISR17022003a

Description

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Lotus Domino and Notes together provide a featured enterprise collaboration

system with Domino providing application server services.

Details

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Lotus Domino 6 suffers from a remotley exploitable buffer overrun

vulnerability when performing a redirect operation. When building the 302

Redirect response, the server takes the client provided “Host” header and

implants this value into the “Location” server header. By requesting certain

documents or views in certain databases the server can be forced to perform

a redirect operation and by supplying an overly long string for the

hostname, a buffer can be overflowed allowing an attacker to gain control of

the Domino Web Services process. By default these databases can be accessed

by anonymous users. Any arbitrary code supplied will run in the context of

the account running Domino allowing an attacker to gain control of the

server.

Fix Information

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IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Release 6.0.1 is now available and being marketed

as the first maintenance release. IBM say if customers haven’t already

upgraded or migrated to Notes and Domino 6, now is the time to move and

start reaping the benefits of this existing and highly praised release.

Release 6.0.1 includes fixes to enhance the quality and reliability of the

Notes and Domino 6 products. It does not however mention any security

issues, and NGS would strongly advise to upgrade as soon as possible not to

just to “reap the benefits” but to secure the server and data against

possible attacks.

The upgrade / patch can be obtained from:

http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/search.jsp?q=&cat=&pf=&k=&dt=&

go=y&rs=ESD-DMNTSRVRi&S_TACT=&S_CMP=&sb=r

A check for this issue has been added to DominoScan R2, a comprehensive

automated intelligent assessment tool for Lotus Domino Servers of which more

information is available from the NGSSite

http://www.ngssoftware.com/software/dominoscan.html

Further Information

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For further information about the scope and effects of buffer overflows,

please see

http://www.ngssoftware.com/papers/non-stack-bo-windows.pdf

http://www.ngssoftware.com/papers/ntbufferoverflow.html

http://www.ngssoftware.com/papers/bufferoverflowpaper.rtf

http://www.ngssoftware.com/papers/unicodebo.pdf

About NGSSoftware

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NGSSoftware design, research and develop intelligent, advanced application

security assessment scanners. Based in the United Kingdom, NGSSoftware have

offices in the South of London and the East Coast of Scotland. NGSSoftware’s

sister company NGSConsulting, offers best of breed security consulting

services, specialising in application, host and network security

assessments.

http://www.ngssoftware.com/

http://www.ngsconsulting.com/

Telephone +44 208 401 0070

Fax +44 208 401 0076

enquiries@ngssoftware.com