Technical Description

A vulnerability has been identified in Apple Mac OS X, which could be exploited by attackers to obtain elevated privileges. This flaw is due to an error in the compilation options of the Perl binary that does not properly drop privileges when a Perl application uses the "$< = numeric_id;" statement to set its uid, which could be exploited, in conjunction with vulnerabilities present in Perl applications, to obtain elevated privileges.

Affected Products

Apple Mac OS X Server 10.3.9

Solution

Security Update 2006-001 for Mac OS X 10.4.5 (PPC) :
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2006001macosx1045ppc.html
Security Update 2006-001 for Mac OS X 10.4.5 Client (Intel) :
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate2006001macosx1045clientintel.html
Security Update 2006-001 for Mac OS X 10.3.9 Client :
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate20060011039client.html
Security Update 2006-001 for Mac OS X 10.3.9 Server :
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate20060011039server.html

References

http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2005/2869
http://www.frsirt.com/english/reference/6753

Credits

Vulnerability reported by Jason Self

ChangeLog

2005-12-13 : Initial release
2006-03-01 : Updated Solution

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