Worldsecure/Mail 4.3 vulnerability

[andreas.kuechler () GIEPA DE (Andreas Küchler)]

Worldsecure uses anonymous ftp to transfer their virus patterns
automatically from their site download.worldtalk.com to the Worldsecure
server. Obviously Worldtalk does __NOT__ check any signatures after the
file has been downloaded and integrates them into the antivirus engine
of the WorldSecure/Mail server. There are two scenarios:

1) if anyone gets access to the pattern files on download.worldtalk.com
and replaces them with a modified version :

a) he can transport any file named *.dat to the users worldsecure server
(the server transports everything called *.dat that is embeded inside
the dat-xxxx.zip residing on the ftp server to a directory under
Worldtalk called after the pattern revision. All you have to do is to
find the actual revision number of mcafees dat-files, add one and place
a new dat on the ftp server. By doing this you reach __ANY__
WS/Mail-server with enabled autoupdate feature!

b) by replacing scan.dat with any file which is not a virus pattern the
virus engine will be unable to scan for any viruses any more... By the
way wherent there some exploits against MS FTP Service 4.0 !?! :-(

2) if anyone gets access to the local registry of a worldsecure/Mail
server he can modify the download site from where worldtalk retrieves
its updates. He can then acomplish the same thing as before. (only on
the smaller scope of one server)

The big problem is that the Worldsecure/Mail server uses any file as
virus pattern and actually scans with this modified file (I tried
wincmd.exe !!! renamed as scan.dat) without producing any warnings or
log entries. The administrator has only a chance to smell the mess when
he restarts the server because then the virus engine will not
initialize.

Worldtalk has been informed about this scenarios and admits that there
is a problem which will be solved in a future release of
Worldsecure/Mail.

--
Andreas Kuechler
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Leiter Netzwerke und Service         Giegerich & Partner GmbH
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+49 6103 5881 79 Fax                 Germany
http://www.giepa.de                  andreas.kuechler () giepa de
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