The Solaris rpc.metad(1M) Daemon is Vulnerable to a Denial of Service (DoS) Attack

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The Solaris rpc.metad(1M) Daemon is Vulnerable to a Denial of Service (DoS) Attack

1. Impact

A security vulnerability in rpc.metad(1M) may allow a local or remote unprivileged user to crash rpc.metad(1M), resulting in failure of the service and causing Solaris Volume Manager (SVM) commands to fail.  This is a type of Denial-of-Service (DoS).

This issue is referenced in the following document:

CVE-2008-1480 http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-1480

2. Contributing Factors

This issue can occur in the following releases:

SPARC Platform:

• Solaris 9 without patch 116669-34
• Solaris 10 without patch 138632-03
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_01 through snv_95

x86 Platform:

• Solaris 9 without patch 138574-01
• Solaris 10 without patch 138882-02
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_01 through snv_95

Note: Solaris 8 is not affected by this issue.

OpenSolaris distributions may include additional bug fixes above and beyond the build from which it was derived.

The base build can be derived as follows:

$ uname -v
snv_86

3. Symptoms

Should the described issue occur, rpc.metad(1M) exits unexpectedly and may also generate a core file.

There may also be system error messages similar to the following:

rpc.metad: [ID 702911 daemon.error] Segmentation Fault
rpc.metad: [ID 702911 daemon.error] Bus Error
inetd[352]: [ID 702911 daemon.error] Instance
svc:/network/rpc/meta:default has  exceeded its
configured failure rate, transitioning to maintenance

/usr/sbin/metaset commands on remote hosts fail with:

metaset: <remote host>: metad client create: RPC: Program not registered

/usr/sbin/meteaset commands on the local host fail with:

metaset: <local host>: network/rpc/meta:default: service not online in SMF

/usr/bin/pstack on the resulting core file will show a stack similar to the following:

# /usr/bin/pstack /core
core '/core' of 6368:   /usr/sbin/rpc.metad
ff1d7dac read_vc  () + 8
ff1dc2fc fill_input_buf () + 50
ff1dc358 get_input_bytes () + 30
ff1dc414 set_input_fragment () + 28
ff1dbc88 xdrrec_getbytes () + 34
ff1dbb74 xdrrec_getint32 () + 70
ff1dbc0c xdrrec_getlong () + 8
ff1c8350 xdr_callmsg () + 3b8
ff1d8634 svc_vc_recv () + b0
ff1cf978 svc_getreq_common () + cc
ff1cf88c svc_getreq_poll () + 9c
ff1d483c _svc_run () + f0
ff1d4534 svc_run  () + 84
0001c0e8 main     () + 2cc
000147d0 _start   () + 108

4. Workaround

There is no workaround for this issue. However, it may be possible to recover from the Denial of Service condition using the following method:

Verify that rpc.metad is not running:

For Solaris 8 and 9:

# pgrep -lf rpc.metad || /usr/sbin/rpc.metad

then restart rpc.metad as follows:

For Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris:

# pgrep -lf rpc.metad || svcadm clear network/rpc/meta

5. Resolution

This issue is addressed in the following releases:

SPARC Platform:

• Solaris 9 with patch 116669-34 or later
• Solaris 10 with patch 138632-03 or later
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_96 or later

x86 Platform:

• Solaris 9 with patch 138574-01 or later
• Solaris 10 with patch 138882-02  or later
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_96 or later

For more information on Security Sun Alerts, see Technical Instruction ID 213557.

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Modification History

06-May-2009: Updated Contributing Factors and Resolution sections; issue is Resolved

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