Software Engineering Institute

VERITAS Backup Exec is a data backup and recovery solution with support for over the network backup.

VERITAS Backup Exec Server products have a heap overflow vulnerability that may be exploited by an unauthenticated remote attacker who can connect to the TCP port on which the Backup Exec server service is listening.

VERITAS Software has released information about this and five other security issues affecting VERITAS Backup Exec for Windows and Netware Servers. For more information about this specific vulnerability please see:

VERITAS Software Security Advisory VX05-006 available from http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/276607.htm.

Information on the other vulnerabilities along with patch details can be found at:

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/277428.htm.

An unauthenticated remote attacker can execute arbitrary code on the backup server and gain administrative control of the computer.

Apply a patch from the vendor, see http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/276607.htm for details.

Workarounds

VERITAS Software has indicated that "in Backup Exec 9.x for Windows Servers, the issue can be avoided by disabling the Admin Plus Pack Option" but that this "does not alleviate the issue in Backup Exec 10.0 for Windows Servers."

Other mitigation strategies include the use of network and/or host based firewalls to limit connectivity to backup servers so that only trusted servers that require connectivity are allowed access. Server/workstations being backed up should only have access to the necessary ports for the back up to work correctly. At minimum, some basic protection should be in effect at the network boundaries. Individual installations may operate on nonstandard ports, which should be taken into account when developing network traffic filtering rules.