Software Engineering Institute

The Microsoft Windows 2000 event viewer contains a buffer overflow that can be exploited when a record written to an event log is examined by the event viewer. Both privileged and unprivileged users can read and write to the system and application logs, but only privileged users and processes can read and write the security log. The buffer overflow occurs in the code used to process and display properties of individual event records. For more information, see

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-013.asp

The data needed to run code can be inserted into event logs remotely, but an intruder cannot cause the vulnerability to be triggered without tricking or cooercing someone to examine the particular event log record containing the malicious data.

An intruder who can write to an event log can insert data that will cause a buffer overflow to occur when a user examines the record in the event log. This will allow the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the person examining the record.

Apply a patch as described in the Microsoft bulletin.