Symantec Norton Ghost 10 Recovery Points Insecure Password Storage Vulnerability iDefense Security Advisory 04.26.07 http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/ Apr 26, 2007 I. BACKGROUND Symantec Norton Ghost is a backup and recovery application designed to allow users to completely restore their systems to previous snapshots. More information can be found from the vendors site at the following URL. http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10 II. DESCRIPTION Norton Ghost allows administrators and other power users to schedule snapshots of local disks for backup and recovery purposes. If these recovery points are set to save to a remote network share Ghost will prompt the user to enter a user name and password for the share. Password information entered into Ghost for this purpose is encrypted and saved to the local file system in the applications home directory which has read access allowed for all users. The encryption key used by Ghost to decrypt these stored credentials is derived from the MD5 hash of the plain text user name stored in the configuration file. Since every user on the system has read access to these configuration files, any user can decrypt the stored passwords. III. ANALYSIS This vulnerability is the result of insecure encryption utilization plus insecure file permissions. In order for this exploit to have an impact, administrators would either have to configure client machines to save restore points images to a private share, or the vulnerable machine would have to be shared by several users who each saved their restore points images to private shares. IV. DETECTION iDefense verified the existence of this vulnerability on Norton Ghost 10.0. Other versions may be vulnerable as well. V. WORKAROUND If your current backup policy is vulnerable to this exploit scenario one possible work around is to configure client machines to save images to user network shares so that the configuration files only contain the individual users network credentials. VI. VENDOR RESPONSE Symantec has addressed this vulnerability with a software update. The update is available via their LiveUpdate channels. For more information, consult their advisory at the following URL. http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/security/Content/2007.04.26.html VII. CVE INFORMATION A Mitre Corp. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) number has not been assigned yet. VIII. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE 01/02/2007 Initial vendor notification 03/21/2007 Second vendor notification 03/22/2007 Initial vendor response 04/26/2007 Coordinated public disclosure IX. CREDIT This vulnerability was reported to iDefense by Pravus. Get paid for vulnerability research http://labs.idefense.com/methodology/vulnerability/vcp.php Free tools, research and upcoming events http://labs.idefense.com/ X. LEGAL NOTICES Copyright © 2007 iDefense, Inc. Permission is granted for the redistribution of this alert electronically. It may not be edited in any way without the express written consent of iDefense. If you wish to reprint the whole or any part of this alert in any other medium other than electronically, please e-mail customerservice@xxxxxxxxxxxx for permission. Disclaimer: The information in the advisory is believed to be accurate at the time of publishing based on currently available information. Use of the information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition. There are no warranties with regard to this information. Neither the author nor the publisher accepts any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, this information.
