Security firm finds a hole in Sun One

Security specialist @Stake says that a module that ships with Sun's Sun One Application Server has a flaw which could be exploited by outside attackers and which could give them control of the running Web server.

The flaw is in the Connector Module, a Netscape Server Application Programming Interface (NSAPI) plug-in that integrates the Sun One Web Server with the Application Server.

An overly long URI in an incoming HTTP request handled by the module could cause a stack buffer overflow, @Stake said in an advisory Thursday.

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Security specialist @Stake says that a module that ships with Sun's Sun One Application Server has a flaw which could be exploited by outside attackers and which could give them control of the running Web server.

The flaw is in the Connector Module, a Netscape Server Application Programming Interface (NSAPI) plug-in that integrates the Sun One Web Server with the Application Server.

An overly long URI in an incoming HTTP request handled by the module could cause a stack buffer overflow, @Stake said in an advisory Thursday.

The flaw affects Sun One Application Server 6.0 and Sun One Application Server 6.5. A patch is available for Version 6.5.

No patch is available for Version 6.0, according to @Stake, but there are a number of workarounds.

These include:

• Writing an NSAPI module to inspect the length of HTTP request URIs.

• Terminating the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) session on a device before the Sun ONE Web server and installing an Intrusion Detection System sensor to monitor the clear-text traffic.

• Terminating the SSL session on a reverse proxy that performs data validation on all HTTP request headers.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.