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NetScreen-Security Manager fails to encrypt communications with managed devices

Vulnerability Note VU#927630

Original Release Date: 2004-01-22 | Last Revised: 2004-01-23

Overview

A vulnerability in the NetScreen-Security Manager software could expose sensitive information in cleartext over the network.

Description

NetScreen Technologies' NetScreen-Security Manager provides centralized management for control of device configuration, network settings and security policies. According to a security advisory released by NetScreen:

The default installation of NetScreen-Security Manager does not automatically enable encryption of communications between NetScreen appliances and systems running ScreenOS 5.0 and the Device Server component of the management system.

All communications between NetScreen-Security Manager and devices running ScreenOS 5.0 are clear text, allowing interception of configuration data by third parties, unless the fix below is implemented.

Sensitive information contained in the configuration data, such as configuration passwords, could be exposed to an attacker.

Impact

Sensitive information being sent between the system running the Security Manager and the managed devices would be exposed in cleartext over the network. An attacker who was able to intercept network traffic between these systems may then be able to use this information to influence malicious configuration changes in the managed devices.

Solution

The CERT/CC is currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem.

Workarounds

NetScreen's advisory provides the following mitigation steps for this vulnerability:

Either of the following options will enable 128-bit AES encryption between NetScreen-Security Manager and devices running ScreenOS 5.0:

(1) Add the following line in the devSvr.cfg file located in the /usr/netscreen/DevSvr/var/ folder, then restart DevSvr services:

devSvrManager.cryptoKeyLength 128


- -OR-

(2) As root, run the script 'addCryptoParam.sh', which is available on the NetScreen-Security Manager downloads page at www.netscreen.com/cso, then restart DevSvr services.

NetScreen-Security Manager 2004 Feature Pack 1, available at a later date, will also address this issue.

Vendor Information

927630
 
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References

Acknowledgements

Thanks to NetScreen Technologies, Inc. for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Chad R Dougherty.

Other Information

CVE IDs: None
Severity Metric: 5.63
Date Public: 2004-01-19
Date First Published: 2004-01-22
Date Last Updated: 2004-01-23 16:48 UTC
Document Revision: 14

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