Secunia

NGSSoftware has reported multiple vulnerabilities in Informix Dynamic Server, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges, by malicious users to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) and gain knowledge of sensitive information, and by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system.

1) A boundary error in the "DBINFO()" function can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow.

2) A boundary error in the "LOTOFILE()" function can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow.

3) A boundary error in the "FILETOCLOB()" function can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow.

4) It is possible to execute arbitrary commands via the "dbimp" , "dbexp", and "start_onpload" procedures in sysmaster.

5) A boundary error within the handling of usernames during the authentication process can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow via an overly long username.

Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code.

NOTE: This was originally fixed in a patch, which introduced a boundary error in the error logging functionality.

6) It's possible to execute arbitrary commands via a "SET DEBUG FILE" statement.

7) A boundary error within the handling of "SET DEBUG FILE" statements can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow.

8) A boundary error in the "getname()" function can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow.

9) It's possible to upgrade privileges via C code UDR.

10) Two unspecified errors can be exploited to cause a DoS.

11) User passwords are stored insecurely in plain text in shared memory and may be exposed.

12) Any user has permissions to create a database. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary code.

13) A boundary error in the "ifx_file_to_file()" function can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow.

14) A boundary error within the handling of the "SQLIDEBUG" environment variable in various applications can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow.

Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code with root privileges.

This has been reported to affect Informix on the Linux operating system.

15) It is possible to create and write to arbitrary files via the "LOTOFILE", "rlt_tracefile_set", and "SET DEBUG FILE" functions.

16) It is possible to load a malicious library via the "ifx_load_internal" SQL function.

The vulnerabilities have been reported in versions 7.3, 9.4, and 10.0. Prior versions may also be affected.

Solution
Update to version 7.31.xD9, 9.40.xC8, or 10.00.xC4.

Provided and/or discovered by
David Litchfield and the team at NGSSoftware.

Changelog
Further details available in Customer Area

Original Advisory
IBM:
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21242921

Deep Links
Links available in Customer Area