Having downloaded and given the Oracle October patch a cursory examination,
some of the flaws Oracle told me were being fixed, remain exploitable. Once
again the patch is not sufficient. I will conduct a full investigation of
the patch over the coming few days and post some recommendations once
complete. Incidently, it's good to see that the NGS Disclosure policy of not
publicly releasing details of the flaws "fixed" seems to work as a useful
fail safe mechanism.
More to follow...
Cheers,
David Litchfield
NGSSoftware Ltd
http://www.ngssoftware.com/
David Litchfield of NGSSoftware has discovered discovered multiple
critical and high risk vulnerabilities in the Oracle Database Server.
These vulnerabilities can be exploited by an attacker to gain complete
control of the database server. Versions affected include
Oracle Database 10g - All Releases
Oracle9i Database Server - All Releases
The vulnerabilities include a buffer overflow vulnerability and seventeen
PL/SQL injection vulnerabilities and Oracle has released a patch set to
deal with these issues. It is understood that this patch set fixes a
number of other flaws found by seven other security researchers. Oracle
database administrators are urged to download, test and install the patch
set as soon as possible. See
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/pdf/cpuoct2005.html for
more details.
NGSSQuirreL for Oracle, NGSSoftware's advanced vulnerability assessment
scanner and security manager for Oracle, has been updated to check for and
positively identify these flaws in Oracle database servers on the network.
More information about NGSSQuirreL for Oracle can be found at
http://www.ngssoftware.com/squirrelora.htm.
NGSSoftware are going to withhold details about these flaws for three
months. Full details will be published on the 18th of January 2006. This
three month window will allow Oracle database administrators the time
needed to test and apply the patch set before the details are released to
the general public. This reflects NGSSoftware's new approach to
responsible disclosure.
NGSSoftware Insight Security Research
http://www.ngssoftware.com/
+44(0)208 401 0070
