Multiple critical flaws identified in Oracle

Article

Multiple critical flaws identified in Oracle

Shawna McAlearney, News Writer

Thirty-four vulnerabilities -- the majority of them critical -- have been identified in multiple versions of Oracle's database server.

"Most of the flaws are critical," said David Litchfield, a researcher at UK-based NGSSoftware, whose company discovered the flaws. "One allows an attacker to gain control of the database server without a userID or password. Others allow low-privileged users (i.e. those that do have a userID and password) to gain complete control of the database server."

Litchfield discussed the vulnerabilities in very broad terms at last week's Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas. He refused to provide specific detail on the flaws because Oracle hasn't released patches yet. Generally, the flaws have to do with the Procedural Language/Structured Query Language and its triggers.

    Requires Free Membership to View

    Login

    SearchSecurity.com members gain immediate and unlimited access to breaking industry news, virus alerts, new hacker threats, highly focused security newsletters, and more -- all at no cost. Join me on SearchSecurity.com today!

    Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchSecurity.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchSecurity.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

10g, 8i and 9i are all vulnerable so anyone running any of these versions of Oracle should pay attention when the patches come out.
David Litchfield
researcherNGSSoftware

PL/SQL is Oracle's extension to standard SQL and is programmable like T-SQL in the Microsoft world, said Litchfield. It's used to create stored procedures, functions, packages (collections of procedures and functions), triggers and objects, and extends external procedure functionality.

PL/SQL executes with the privileges of the definer; a procedure owned by SYS executes with SYS privileges. A procedure owned by SYS but called by SCOTT executes with the privileges of SCOTT (analogous to Suid programs in the *nix world). It acts as a proxy, passing requests to the database server and allowing PL/SQL to execute inside the database server.

To protect against PL/SQL injection, Litchfield recommends using BIND variables and validating input.

"10g, 8i and 9i are all vulnerable so anyone running any of these versions of Oracle should pay attention when the patches come out," Litchfield said. "Oracle 7 is also vulnerable but is no longer supported by Oracle so no patches for this version will be made available."