search menu icon-carat-right cmu-wordmark

CERT Coordination Center

Solaris Line Printer Daemon (in.lpd) vulnerable to buffer overflow via transfer job routine

Vulnerability Note VU#484011

Original Release Date: 2001-06-21 | Last Revised: 2001-08-31

Overview

A buffer overflow exists in the Solaris line printer daemon (in.lpd) that may allow a remote intruder to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the running in.lpd. This daemon runs with root privileges by default on all recent versions of Solaris.

Description

The Solaris in.lpd provides services for remote users to interact with a local printer, listening for remote requests on port 515/tcp. There is an unchecked buffer in the part of the code responsible for transferring print jobs from one machine to another. If given too many jobs to work on at once, an attacker can either crash the printer daemon or attempt to execute arbitrary code with super user privileges on the victim system.

This problem was discovered by ISS X-Force and posted here on June 19, 2001.

Vulnerable versions of Solaris are as follows:

    Solaris 2.6
    Solaris 2.6 x86
    Solaris 7
    Solaris 7 x86
    Solaris 8
    Solaris 8 x86

Sun recommends the following workarounds until the patches identified below may be applied:
    • Disable the print service in /etc/inetd.conf
    • Enable the noexec_user_stack tunable
    • Block access to 515/tcp (printer) at all appropriate network perimeters

Impact

A remote intruder may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges in the running daemon (typically root). In addition, a remote intruder may be able to crash vulnerable printer daemons.

Solution

Patches have been released by Sun. They are part of a jumbo lp patch set identified by the following ids, per Sun Security Bulletin #206:

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

        OS Version               Patch ID
       __________               _________
       SunOS 5.8                109320-04
       SunOS 5.8_x86            109321-04
       SunOS 5.7                107115-09
       SunOS 5.7_x86            107116-09
       SunOS 5.6                106235-09
       SunOS 5.6_x86            106236-09

The in.lpd daemon was not available prior to Solaris 2.6.

These patches resolve Sun problem report 4446925 *in.lpd* contains a remote exploitable overflow.

Workarounds


    • Disable the print service in /etc/inetd.conf
    • Enable the noexec_user_stack tunable
    • Block access to 515/tcp (printer) at all appropriate network perimeters

Vendor Information

484011
 

CVSS Metrics

Group Score Vector
Base
Temporal
Environmental

References

Acknowledgements

The X-Force team of Internet Security Systems, Inc. has released an advisory about this issue.

This document was written by Jeffrey S. Havrilla

Other Information

CVE IDs: CVE-2001-0353
CERT Advisory: CA-2001-15
Severity Metric: 56.43
Date Public: 2001-06-19
Date First Published: 2001-06-21
Date Last Updated: 2001-08-31 17:30 UTC
Document Revision: 12

Sponsored by CISA.