Re: MacOS X SoftwareUpdate Vulnerability

From: Kurt Seifried (bugtraqat_private)
Date: Mon Jul 08 2002 - 11:52:40 PDT

  • Next message: Matthew Murphy: "BadBlue 1.73 EXT.DLL XSS Variant"

    >> Date:      July 6, 2002
    >> Version:   MacOS 10.1.X and possibly 10.0.X
    >> Problem:   MacOS X SoftwareUpdate connects to the SoftwareUpdate Server
    via
    >>            HTTP with no authentication, leaving it vulnerable to attack.
    >[...]
    >> Solution/Patch/Workaround:
    >[...]
    >
    >A possible workaround:
    >
    >System Preferences -> Software Update -> Update Software: [x] Manually
    >Donīt touch the "Update Now"-Button!
    >
    >Look for updates on http://www.info.apple.com/support/downloads.html
    >Use trusted networks or http-to-mail gateway to get the files.
    
    How is this an improvement? The whole premise of the attack relies on
    DNS/ARP poisoning/spoofing, which is super trivial if you are local, pretty
    easy on the same subnet, and usually possible across the Internet. So
    instead of directing you to swquery.apple.com or *.g.akamai.net I simply
    redirect you to my version of www.apple.com.
    
    Apple doesn't even post MD5 sum's of the files, let alone a PGP/GnuPG
    signature, there is absoulutely no verification of the packages as far as I
    can tell.
    
    >HTH,
    >
    >Julian
    
    Kurt Seifried, kurtat_private
    A15B BEE5 B391 B9AD B0EF
    AEB0 AD63 0B4E AD56 E574
    http://seifried.org/security/
    http://www.iDefense.com/
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Jul 08 2002 - 13:25:57 PDT