System Patches

[posted 2002/01/22]

In the past week, a handful of our machines were compromised by a cracker exploiting the CDE Subprocess Control Service (dtspcd) buffer overflow vulnerability.  PIKT alerted us to the security breach with

Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 19:25:24 -0600 (CST)
From: Super-User <>
To: ...
Subject: PIKT Alert on bucharest: Urgent


                                PIKT ALERT
                         Wed Jan 16 19:24:52 2002
                                  bucharest

URGENT:
    RootCoreFileExistUrgent
        Deal with /core files

        /core:          ELF 32-bit MSB core file SPARC Version 1, from 'dtspcd'
        -rw-rw-rw-   1 root     root      547120 Jan 16 19:04 /core
        moved /core file to /tmp, after the move:
        /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0      61484   33041   22295    60%    /

Before we had a chance to react to this, PIKT reported something perhaps even more worrisome:

Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 08:35:30 -0600 (CST)
From: Super-User <>
To: ...
Subject: PIKT Alert on bucharest: Critical


                                PIKT ALERT
                         Thu Jan 17 08:32:15 2002
                                  bucharest

CRITICAL:
    RunawayProcCritical
        Detect runaway processes, and cpu-hogs

            USER TT        PID  PPID        TIME COMMAND
            root ?       23757     1    02:08:00 ./m
            root ?       23756     1    02:08:58 ./m
            root ?       23755     1    02:12:34 ./m
            root ?       23754     1    02:06:39 ./m

"m" is a DOS tool, which in this case was being used to attack a host somewhere in Poland.

(PIKT reported various other signs of trouble with bucharest that night--all symptoms of the heavy workload imposed by the four m procs.)

After applying the recently released Solaris dtspcd patch, I was motivated finally to implement an alarm script I've been thinking about for quite a long time.  The following is from a new configuration file, alarms/patches_alarms.cfg:

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// patches_alarms.cfg
//
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

...

#if solaris

PatchesSystemNotExistWarning

        init
                status active
                level warning
                task "Report the absence of critical system patches"
                input file "=patches_system_obj"
                dat $patch 1
                keys $patch

        rule    // bypass placeholder
                if $patch eq "000000-00"
                        next
                endif

        rule    // every $patch has its own #dn value
                set #dn = #daynumber()

        rule
                set $log = "/var/sadm/patch/$patch/log"

        rule    // initialize state
                set $state = "-"

        rule    // look for evidence of successful patch
                if    -e $log
                   && #val($command("=grep -c 'was successful' $log"))
                        set $state = "+"
                endif

        rule    // report if not found or unsuccessful
                if $state eq "-"
                        if    $state ne %state          // report initial
                           || #dn < %dn                 // repeat weekly
                                output mail "patch $patch not installed!"
                        endif
                endif

#endif  // solaris

...

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

=patches_system_obj is defined in macros/files_pikt_obj_macros.cfg as

#if solaris
patches_system_obj      =objdir/PatchesSystem.obj
#endif

PatchesSystem.obj sources from the new configuration file patches_system_objects.cfg:

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// patches_system_objects.cfg
//
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

#if solaris

PatchesSystem

        000000-00       // placeholder to ensure stanza content

/*
// empty template, ready for filling in
#  if solaris26

#  elsif solaris27

#  elsif solaris28

#  endif
*/

// dtspcd
#  if solaris26
#    if ! kiev          // lacks prerequisite packages
        105669-11
#    endif  // ! kiev
#  elsif solaris27
        106934-04
#  elsif solaris28
        108949-07
#  endif  // solaris26 ...

...

#endif  // solaris

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

After registering some important security-related system patches in this file, installing on all Solaris systems, and running the PatchesSystemNotExistWarning script (in a Test alert), sure enough, we discovered a few systems with missing patches because

• they were out of action when the patch(es) were applied
• they were new or rebuilt systems, and we forgot to apply the patches
• other reasons

Anyway, this is one more PIKT-based addition to our security toolkit.  This will be refined and expanded as we go along.  (Among other things, we need an automated way to register newly released patch versions in the patches_system_objects.cfg file.)

For more examples, see Developer's Notes.