__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN PostgreSQL Database Privilege Escalation Vulnerability [US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#567452] February 27, 2006 21:00 GMT Number Q-135 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: There is a vulnerability in the way that PostgreSQL recovers from errors. PLATFORM: PostgreSQL versions 8.1.0 to 8.1.2 DAMAGE: An authenticated attacker may be able to gain elevated privileges on a PostgreSQL database. SOLUTION: Upgrade to PostgreSQL version 8.1.3 ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY The risk is LOW. An authenticated attacker could gain elevated ASSESSMENT: privileges on a PostgreSQL database. ______________________________________________________________________________ LINKS: CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/bulletins/q-135.shtml ORIGINAL BULLETIN: US-CERT Vulnerability NoteVU#567452 http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/567452 CVE: http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name= CVE-2006-0553 ______________________________________________________________________________ [***** Start US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#567452 *****] Vulnerability Note VU#567452 PostgreSQL database privilege escalation vulnerability Overview PostgreSQL fails to properly recover from errors. This may allow an authenticated attacker to gain elevated privileges on a PostgreSQL database. I. Description PostgreSQL Database PostgreSQL is an open source database management system. The Problem There is a vulnerability in the way that PostgreSQL recovers from errors. According to the release notes for PostgreSQL 8.1.3: Due to inadequate validity checking, a user could exploit the special case that SET ROLE normally uses to restore the previous role setting after an error. This allowed ordinary users to acquire superuser status, for example. Considerations This issue only exists in PostgreSQL versions 8.1.0 to 8.1.2. An attacker must have valid credentials to exploit this vulnerability. II. Impact An authenticated attacker may be able to gain elevated privileges on a PostgreSQL database. III. Solution Upgrade This issue has been corrected in PostgreSQL version 8.1.3. Systems Affected Vendor Status Date Updated PostgreSQL Vulnerable 27-Feb-2006 References http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/release.html#RELEASE-8-1-3 http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-announce/2006-02/msg00008.php http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/release-7-3-14.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/release-7-4-12.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/release-8-0-7.html http://secunia.com/advisories/18890/ Credit This issue was reported in the release notes for PostgreSQL 8.1.3. PostgreSQL credits Akio Ishida with providing information regarding this issue. This document was written by Jeff Gennari. Other Information Date Public 02/14/2006 Date First Published 02/27/2006 10:43:27 AM Date Last Updated 02/27/2006 CERT Advisory CVE Name CVE-2006-0553 Metric 2.55 Document Revision 17 [***** End US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#567452 *****] _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of US-CERT for the information contained in this bulletin. _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, is the computer security incident response team for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the emergency backup response team for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CIAC is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. CIAC is also a founding member of FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, a global organization established to foster cooperation and coordination among computer security teams worldwide. CIAC services are available to DOE, DOE contractors, and the NIH. CIAC can be contacted at: Voice: +1 925-422-8193 (7x24) FAX: +1 925-423-8002 STU-III: +1 925-423-2604 E-mail: ciac@ciac.org Previous CIAC notices, anti-virus software, and other information are available from the CIAC Computer Security Archive. World Wide Web: http://www.ciac.org/ Anonymous FTP: ftp.ciac.org PLEASE NOTE: Many users outside of the DOE, ESnet, and NIH computing communities receive CIAC bulletins. If you are not part of these communities, please contact your agency's response team to report incidents. Your agency's team will coordinate with CIAC. The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is a world-wide organization. A list of FIRST member organizations and their constituencies can be obtained via WWW at http://www.first.org/. This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor the University of California nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the United States Government or the University of California. 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