Security Vulnerability in the Solaris auditconfig(3M) Command May Allow Users With an Associated RBAC Profile to Gain Elevated Privileges

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Security Vulnerability in the Solaris auditconfig(3M) Command May Allow Users With an Associated RBAC Profile to Gain Elevated Privileges

1. Impact

A security vulnerability in the Solaris auditconfig(1M) command may allow a local user who has been assigned an RBAC execution profile which specifies additional privileges for auditconfig(1M) such as the "Audit Control" profile, to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges specified in the RBAC profile.

2. Contributing Factors

This issue can occur in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

• Solaris 8 without patch 109007-28
• Solaris 9 without patch 122300-39
• Solaris 10 without patch 140921-01
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_01 through snv_58

x86 Platform

• Solaris 8 without patch 109008-28
• Solaris 9 without patch 122301-39
• Solaris 10 without patch 140922-01
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_01 through snv_58

Notes:

1. Solaris 8 entered EOSL Phase 2 on 1 April 2009. Entitlement to patches developed on or after 1 April 2009 requires the purchase of the Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Service. See note in section 5 for more details.

2. This issue only affects systems which have Solaris Auditing (see bsmconv(1M)) enabled.  To determine if a system has Solaris Auditing enabled, the grep(1) command can be used to search the '/etc/system' file for a reference to the c2audit kernel module as in the following example:

$ grep c2audit /etc/system
set c2audit:audit_load = 1                              

3. This issue only affects systems where a local user has been granted an execution profile allowing them to run the auditconfig(1M) command with elevated privileges, such as the "Audit Control" profile.

The assignment of profiles to users is configured in the user_attr(4) database.  The exec_attr(4) database specifies the execution attributes associated with profiles.  Thus, if a system is configured to only reference local files for the user_attr(4) and exec_attr(4) databases, then users who have been assigned a profile containing auditconfig can be determined as follows:

$ grep auditconfig /etc/security/exec_attr
Audit Control:suser:cmd:::/usr/sbin/auditconfig:euid=0

$ grep 'Audit Control' /etc/user_attr
username::::profiles=Audit Control

Systems which are configured via nsswitch.conf(4) to use attribute sources other than local files for the user_attr(4) and exec_attr(4) databases will need to use the relevant commands to perform the equivalent search.  See the documentation for the relevant attribute source (for example, ldap(1), ypfiles(4) or nis+(1)) for details.

3. Symptoms

There are no predictable symptoms that would indicate this issue has been exploited to execute arbitrary commands with elevated privileges.

4. Workaround

To work around this issue until patches can be applied, remove references to the auditconfig(1M) command from the exec_attr(4) database.  This will result in users who have been assigned the relevant execution profile(s) to no longer be granted privileged access to the auditconfig command.

For example, if the system is configured to only reference local files for the exec_attr(4) database, a '#' symbol can be inserted at the beginning of lines in the "/etc/security/exec_attr" file which reference the 'auditconfig' command:

$ grep auditconfig /etc/security/exec_attr
#Audit Control:suser:cmd:::/usr/sbin/auditconfig:euid=0

5. Resolution

This issue is addressed in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

• Solaris 8 with patch 109007-28 or later
• Solaris 9 with patch 122300-39 or later
• Solaris 10 with patch 140921-01 or later
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_59 or later

x86 Platform

• Solaris 8 with patch 109008-28 or later
• Solaris 9 with patch 122301-39 or later
• Solaris 10 with patch 140922-01 or later
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_59 or later

Note: The READMEs of Solaris 8 patches developed on or after 1 April 2009 are available to all customers. However, Solaris 8 entered EOSL Phase 2 on April 1, 2009 and thus entitlement for these patches, including those that fix security vulnerabilities, requires the purchase of the Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Service. More information about the Solaris 8 Vintage Patch Service is available at:


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

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