Secunia Research has discovered a security issue in various eScan products, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges or by malicious people to manipulate certain settings or gain knowledge of sensitive information.

The MicroWorld Agent service (MWAGENT.EXE) runs with SYSTEM privileges and accepts connections from anywhere without implementing an authentication scheme. This allows anyone to send arbitrary commands to the service (default port 2222/tcp) allowing the following:

1) An unprivileged, local user can gain SYSTEM privileges by sending a SCASYS, SCADRV, or SCAMEM command, which invokes the Anti-Virus scanner in a window with SYSTEM privileges. Through this, it is possible to execute any command with the privileges of the scanner via e.g. the "View Log" functionality.

2) It is possible to disable/enable the eScan Anti-Virus Monitor process via the DISMON and ENAMON commands.

3) An unprivileged, local user can uninstall the product via the UNISOFT command and clicking "Yes" on a window that pops up on the user's desktop.

4) It is possible to disclose the contents of arbitrary files on the system via the SEND command.

5) It is possible to enable/disable the "Restrictive Scanning" configuration setting via the SLOMOD ("High Security (Slow Mode)") and FASMOD ("Medium Security (Fast Mode)") commands.

6) It is possible to enable/disable the eScan "File Rights" configuration setting via the ENFRIG and DIFRIG commands.

7) It is possible to change the server status via the STASER and STOSER commands.

8) It is possible to configure the update server via the UPDSET command.

The security issue is confirmed in versions 8.0.671.1, 9.0.714.1, 9.0.715.1, and 9.0.718.1. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution
A stable version should be available shortly.
Further details available to Secunia VIM customers

Provided and/or discovered by
Carsten Eiram, Secunia Research.

Changelog
Further details available to Secunia VIM customers

Original Advisory
Secunia Research:
http://secunia.com/secunia_research/2007-45/

Deep Links
Links available to Secunia VIM customers