Revision History
12/9/2011 - Updated advisory to reflect availability of Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 SP4 to address this issue.
Severity
Medium
CVSS2 Base Score: 4.4
Impact 6.9, Exploitability 2.7
CVSS2 Vector: (AV:L/AC:M/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C)
Exploit Publicly Available: Yes
Overview
Symantec has provided updates for the Gear Software driver ‘GEARAspiWDM.sys’ in affected versions of supported Symantec products. This update addresses a possible local access denial of service system crash.
Product(s) Affected
NOTE: ONLY the specific products identified above are affected by this issue.
Details
Symantec is aware of a local denial of service as a result of the Gear Software CD DVD filter driver GEARAspiWDM.sys improper validation of external input. The Gear Software driver ships with Symantec products identified in the affected products table above. Successful exploitation would require local authorized access to the targeted system or interaction with an authorized local user to upload and run malicious code on their system.
Symantec Response
Symantec engineers confirmed the issue existing in the Gear Software driver version shipped with the listed products. Gear Software released a driver update to address this issue. Symantec recommends all affected product customers download and apply the update identified above to prevent threats of this nature.
Symantec is not aware of any exploitation of, or adverse customer impact from this issue.
Obtaining the Update
Norton 360 and Symantec System Recovery customers running LiveUpdate in automatic mode have already received an updated version of the affected driver. However, to ensure all available updates have been applied, users can run a manual (interactive) LiveUpdate as follows:
Customers running other impacted products should upgrade to the recommended product version indicated in the Affected Products table or download and apply the latest Gear driver from Gear Software’s web site:
Click the Driver Installer link (for 32 0r 64-bit systems)
At the prompt, click “Run” to install the update directly or “Save” to download the update package to your system where the driver can then be installed.
Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 customers can download the latest update, BESR 2010 SP4, through the FileConnect-Electronic Software Distribution at https://fileconnect.symantec.com/.
Symantec System Recovery 2011 customers can download the latest release, SSR 10.0.1, through the FileConnect-Electronic Software Distribution site at https://fileconnect.symantec.com/.
Best Practices
As part of normal best practices, Symantec strongly recommends:
Restrict access to administration or management systems to privileged users.
Disable remote access or restrict it to trusted/authorized systems only.
Keep all operating systems and applications updated with the latest vendor patches.
Follow a multi-layered approach to security. Run both firewall and anti-malware applications, at a minimum, to provide multiple points of detection and protection to both inbound and outbound threats.
Deploy network and host-based intrusion detection systems to monitor network traffic for signs of anomalous or suspicious activity. This may aid in detection of attacks or malicious activity related to exploitation of latent vulnerabilities.
References
Security Focus, http://www.securityfocus.com, has assigned Bugtraq ID (BID) 47822 to this issue in the Security Focus vulnerability database.
CVE: This issue is a candidate for inclusion in the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security problems. CVE-2011-3477 has been assigned to this issue.
Symantec Product Vulnerability Management PGP Key
