Critical Risk Vulnerability in SAP Message Server (Heap Overflow)

July 6th, 2007

=======
Summary
=======
Name: SAP Message Server Heap Overflow
Release Date: 5 July 2007
Reference: NGS00485
Discover: Mark Litchfield <mark@ngssoftware.com>
Vendor: SAP
Vendor Reference: SECRES-292
Systems Affected: All Versions
Risk: Critical
Status: Fixed

========
TimeLine
========
Discovered: 4 January 2007
Released: 19 January 2007
Approved: 29 January 2007
Reported: 11 January 2007
Fixed: 2 May 2007
Published:

===========
Description
===========
The Message Server is a service used by the different applications servers
to exchange data and internal messages. It is also used for licence
checking and workload balancing together with the SAP logon utility.

The Message Server can found to be listening on the following default TCP
Ports:

Message Server - 3600
Message Server HTTP - 8100
Message Server HTTPS - No Default

Note: All the Message Server available ports share the same PID

Depending on the number of instances that have been installed, the Message
Server can be found to listen on other PORTS. The PORT allocation follows
the rule of incorporating the instance number to generate the TCP port
allocation (<NN>). Examples are

Message Server - 36<NN>
Message Server HTTP - 81<NN>
Message Server HTTPS (if installed) - 444<NN>

=================
Technical Details
=================
In this particular attack, we are targeting the Message HTTP Server in an
unauthenticated state. As can be seen from the example below, we are
sending a GET request to the Message Server listening on (in this case)
TCP Port 8100, passing a Parameter of Group to the URL
/msgserver/html/group with a value of 498 bytes. Sending such a request
will cause a write access violation to your specified string value. For
example using a lower case x would be an access violation writing to
location 0×78787878.

GET /msgserver/html/group?group=**498 bytes** HTTP/1.0
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
Pragma: no-cache
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET
CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Host: sapserver:8100
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive

Whilst this bug allows the remote unauthenticated execution of arbitrary
code (running as SYSTEM on Windows), as can be determined by the
functionality of this service, within a business environment, the
termination of this process can have dire effects to the operation of SAP
and its components.

===============
Fix Information
===============
Please ensure you have the latest version

NGSSoftware Insight Security Research
http://www.ngssoftware.com/
http://www.databasesecurity.com/
http://www.nextgenss.com/
+44(0)208 401 0070

Section Navigation


Customer Testimonials

Read what some of our satisfied customers are saying about us.

We regularly present and speak at international security conferences throughout the world.

Informática 2009, Havana

OWASP AppSec Europe 2008

AusCERT 2008

NGS Publications

Web Application Hacker's Handbook

Oracle Hacker's Handbook

Database Hacker's Handbook

The Shellcoder's Handbook

SQL Server Security

Configuring IPCop Firewalls


Red Herring 100

Red Herring 100

NGSSoftware named as winners in the Red Herring 100.

SLBA 2008

South London Business Awards 2008

David Litchfield named as 'Entrepreneur of the Year' at the South London Business Awards 2008.

Queen's Award 2007

Queens Award 2007

NGSSoftware are delighted to announce that we are winners of the Queen's Award for Enterprise: International Trade 2007.

SC Awards 2008

SC Magazine Awards 2008

NGSSoftware wins 'Best Security Company'.

ITA 2008

International Trade Awards 2008

NGSSoftware South-East England Regional Winners at 2008 International Trade Awards.