Security Alert #19 Reference Date: 10/18/01 Oracle Trace Collection Security Vulnerability Overview A potential security vulnerability has been discovered in the handling of the environment variable, ORACLE_HOME. A buffer overflow is caused when the Oracle binary, otrcrep, translates the environment variable, ORACLE_HOME, into a string of 240 or more bytes. The Oracle binary otrcrep runs with the SETUID oracle privileges in the operating system DBA group. The buffer overflow may be exploited by a local user to force overwriting of stack variables in shared memory including the return memory address(es) and thereby execute arbitrary (or specific, malicious) code with the privileges of the oracle user and/or the DBA group privileges. Products All Oracle database server releases (8.0.x, 8.1.x and 9.0.1) Platforms All Unix platforms Workaround If the ORACLE_HOME environment variable is being translated into a string of 240 or more bytes, disable Oracle Trace by setting its control parameter in init<SID>.ora as follows: oracle_trace_enable=FALSE Change the file permissions on all of the Oracle Trace executables as follows: % chmod -s otrccol otrccref otrcfmt otrcrep % chmod 751 otrccol otrccref otrcfmt otrcrep Patches The potential security vulnerability will be code-fixed in the next release of the Oracle database server which is Oracle9i, Release 2, only. All other releases of the Oracle database (8.0.x, 8.1.x and 9.0.1) must use follow the workarounds specified above to circumvent the potential security vulnerability. Credits Oracle wishes to thank Juan Manuel Pascual EscribĂ for discovering these vulnerabilities and promptly bringing them to Oracle's attention.
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