NMAP developer announces Mac OS X vulnerability

David Heath
Tuesday, 30 March 2010 20:55

Business IT - Security

NMAP developer discovers vulnerability in Max OS X AFS share interface and makes an obvious comparison with a similar Windows issue discovered in 1995.

A cynic might start this report with the famous French quote plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (for the Francophobes: the more things change, the more they stay the same!).

In the interests of 'ethical disclosure,' Patrik Karlsson, one of the developers from the NMAP project who discovered a huge vulnerability chose to hold on to the information until Apple's latest release of the OS (which fixes the problem).

This doesn't mean it is fixed for all versions, only in the latest OS X 10.6.3, released today.  In that article, my colleague Mr Withers notes "Security fixes in 10.6.3 cover the AFP server (two issues)." 

The AFP 'issue' discussed here is very serious (and in the Windows environment, is a mere 15 years old, having been discovered in 1995).

According to the discoverer, "The vulnerability occurs due to improper input validation and allows an attacker to access (list, read, and/or write) files in the parent directory of any AFP sharepoint.

"By default, when enabling AFP, the Public folder in each user's home directory is shared as Public Folder. In my case "Patrik Karlsson's Public Folder". Since the Public folder is a subdirectory of a user's home directory, exploiting this share provides access to all of that user's home directory files (but not subdirectories or files with restrictive filesystem permissions)."

Karlsson continues on the next page...