Symantec fixes multiple critical bugs

Symantec has fixed multiple critical vulnerabilities in its Web Gateway.

The Endpoint Protection technology contained vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to run arbitrary commands with the privileges of the “root”, user while an attacker could get unauthorised access to the appliance.

Austrian firm SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab said the flaws could have permitted visibility of web traffic, interception of HTTP and the plain text form of HTTPS traffic.

If SSL deep inspection was enabled, the appliance held a private key for a Certificate Authority (CA) which if compromised by an attacker, would allow arbitrary certificates to be signed.

“The recommendation of SEC Consult is to switch off the product until a comprehensive security audit based on a security source code review has been performed and all identified security deficiencies have been resolved by the vendor.”

It said that there were six vulnerabilities in total that would allow: reflected cross-site scripting; persistent cross-site scripting; OS command injection; security misconfiguration; SQL Injection; and cross-site request forgery.

Symantec was informed of the flaws on 22 February that existed in version 5.1.0.39 of the Symantec Web Gateway, the most recent version at the time of discovery.

The company released an advisory and product update Friday and confirmed that previous versions were affected. It recommended users update to Symantec Web Gateway version 5.1.1.

It thanked SEC Consult researchers Wolfgang Ettlinger and Stefan Viehböck for reporting five of the flaws, and Offensive Security for reporting CVE-2013-4673.

“Symantec Security Response has released IPS signature 26812 – ‘Web Attack: Symantec Web Gateway XSS' to help detect and block remote exploit attempts. Signatures are available through normal Symantec security updates.”

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com