Bulletin Number: 00170

Title: rpc.nisd

Cross-Ref: CERT CA-98.06
			ISS Security Advisory, June 10, 1998

Create Date: June 10, 1998

Date: June 10, 1998

________________________________________________________________________________

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1.  Bulletins Topics

    Sun announces the release of patches for Solaris(tm) 2.6, 2.5.1, 2.5
    and 2.4 (SunOS(tm) 5.6, 5.5.1, 5.5 and 5.4), which relate to a
    vulnerability in rpc.nisd.
    
    Sun estimates that the release of a patch for Solaris 2.3 (SunOS 5.3) 
    that relates to the same vulnerability will be available within 12 weeks 
    of the date of this bulletin.
    
    Sun strongly recommends that you install the patches listed in section 4 
    immediately on systems running SunOS 5.6, 5.6_x86, 5.5.1, 5.5, and 5.4
    which use rpc.nisd. 
    
2.  Who is Affected
	
    Vulnerable:  SunOS 5.6, 5.6_x86, 5.5.1, 5.5.1_x86, 5.5, 5.5_x86,
    		 5.4, 5.4_x86 and 5.3 on systems which are NIS+ servers.
                 
    Not vulnerable: All other supported versions of SunOS.
    
3.  Understanding the Vulnerability

    The rpc.nisd daemon is an RPC service that implements the NIS+ service.
    This daemon must be running on all machines which serve a portion of
    the NIS+ namespace.  A buffer overflow has been discovered in rpc.nisd
    which could be exploited to gain root access and execute arbitrary
    commands.
    
4.  List of Patches

    The following patches are available in relation to the above problem.

    SunOS		Patch ID	
    _____		_________
    SunOS 5.6		105401-13		
    SunOS 5.6_x86	105402-13
    SunOS 5.5.1		103612-41
    SunOS 5.5.1_x86	103613-41
    SunOS 5.5		103187-38
    SunOS 5.5_x86	103188-38
    SunOS 5.4		101973-35
    SunOS 5.4_x86	101974-35
    SunOS 5.3		101318-91	(to be released in 12 weeks)

_______________________________________________________________________________
Sun acknowledges with thanks CERT/CC and Internet Security Systems, Inc. for
their assistance in this matter.
_______________________________________________________________________________
APPENDICES

A.  Patches listed in this bulletin are available to all Sun customers via 
    World Wide Web at:
    
    	<URL:http://sunsolve.sun.com/sunsolve/pubpatches/patches.html>

B.  Checksums for the patches listed in this bulletin are available via 
    World Wide Web at:

    	<URL:http://sunsolve.sun.com/sunsolve/pubpatches/patches.html>

C.  Sun security bulletins are available via World Wide Web at:

	<URL:http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/secbul.pl>
	
D.  Sun Security Coordination Team's PGP key is available via World Wide Web 
    at:

	<URL:http://sunsolve.sun.com/sunsolve/secbulletins/SunSCkey.txt>
		    	    	    
E.  To report or inquire about a security problem with Sun software, contact 
    one or more of the following:
  
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        - Your representative computer security response team, such as CERT 
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