Dr. Peter Bieringer has reported a vulnerability in Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to perform certain actions on a vulnerable system with escalated privileges.

The vulnerability is caused due to a race condition when running LiveUpdate via the shell script "liveupdate.sh". The problem is that a log file is created insecurely with a predictable name ("/tmp/LiveUpdate.log") by default as specified in the "/etc/liveupdate.conf" configuration file.

This can be exploited to overwrite an arbitrary file with the privileges of the user executing the shell script via a symlink attack when running LiveUpdate for the first time.

The vulnerability affects version 4.3 for Solaris and Red Hat Linux.

Other minor security issues during installation regarding temporary directory naming based on PIDs and known names were also reported.

Solution
A build update has been released, which customers can obtain via their usual technical support channels. An update for Symantec Java LiveUpdate will reportedly also be available soon.

Provided and/or discovered by
Dr. Peter Bieringer

Changelog
Further details available to Secunia VIM customers

Original Advisory
http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/security/Content/2004.03.23.html

Deep Links
Links available to Secunia VIM customers