Security holes uncovered in Symantec, Norton products

By Kieren McCarthy, Techworld.com

May 13, 2004 12:00 PM ET

TechWorld.com - Almost the entire range of Symantec Corp. security software, from Norton Internet Security through to the Symantec Firewall, requires urgent updates, the company has warned, after four critical vulnerabilities were found by security company eEye Digital Security Inc.
One of the holes remains open even with all ports filtered and intrusion rules set thanks to a separate design flaw, eEye has warned. This makes it an almost certain target for worm writers, one of which -- if history is any indication -- may be put out on the Internet within 24 hours.
Symantec was informed of the holes on April 19, and provided patches for them today. The patches should be installed as part of the Live Update feature in most packages, but some will require the manual download and installation of patches, and those that have automatic updating switched off will need to run Live Update as soon as possible.
EEye explains in its advisories that the holes, all of which are within the symdns.sys driver, allow system access, the opportunity to create a denial-of-service attack and -- most serious -- an open door to a worm.
In connection with one vulnerability, eEye warned: "With the ability to freely execute code at the Ring 0 privilege level, there are literally no boundaries for an attacker. It should also be noted, that due to a separate design flaw in the firewalls handling of incoming packets, this attack can be successfully performed with all ports filtered, and all intrusion rules set."
Security company Secunia has warned that the last time such a hole appeared -- in ISS's security software, affecting how it handled ICQ traffic -- a worm, Witty, appeared just a day after the exploit was made public.
Symantec has more detail on the flaws with links to patches on its Web site.

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