Netscape's iPlanet iCal application is a network based calendar service built for deployment in organizations which require a centralized calendar system. Certain versions of iCal ship with a vulnerability in /opt/SUNWicsrv/cal/bin/csstart program. This program is designed to launch the 'cshttpd' server which is the web based interface for the iCal product. The problem lies in that the 'csstart' program when run attempts by default to launch cshttpd out of the directory the user is in when they issue the command. Therefore, if a malicious user creates their own cshttpd in the directory from which they launch the csstart the fake server which be launched as opposed to the actual service. This rogue service is effectively launched as the user icsuser and allows the attacker to issue commands as such. Because this user ID owns the iCal directories and files the attacker may user to leverage the attack to root privileges. The example given in the @ Stake advisory is for a user to place...
Netscape's iPlanet iCal application is a network based calendar service built for deployment in organizations which require a centralized calendar system. Certain versions of iCal ship with a vulnerability in /opt/SUNWicsrv/cal/bin/csstart program. This program is designed to launch the 'cshttpd' server which is the web based interface for the iCal product. The problem lies in that the 'csstart' program when run attempts by default to launch cshttpd out of the directory the user is in when they issue the command. Therefore, if a malicious user creates their own cshttpd in the directory from which they launch the csstart the fake server which be launched as opposed to the actual service. This rogue service is effectively launched as the user icsuser and allows the attacker to issue commands as such. Because this user ID owns the iCal directories and files the attacker may user to leverage the attack to root privileges. The example given in the @ Stake advisory is for a user to place shim libraries in the iCal library directory to have the csstart binary retain it's setuid privileges as opposed to dropping them as it is designed to.
