Symantec Endpoint Protection, developed by the US-based Symantec Corporation, was shipped without removing several critical security vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities were discovered in a routine ’99er’ security crash test by experts of the SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab. The unremoved vulnerabilities enable state-sponsored or criminal hackers to take full control of the ‘Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager’ server. With the full control of the server the attackers could obliterate the endpoint protection.
The Internet Storm Center (ISC) at the SANS Institute is reporting a burst of scanning on ports used by Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager (SEPM) versions 11.0 and 12.1. The scanning appears aimed at building a list of systems vulnerable to a recently-disclosed vulnerability in the product. Symantec disclosed the vulnerability on February 10 and released updates to SEPM (click here for instructions on how to apply updates). The fixed versions of the management console are 11.0 RU7 MP4a (11.0.7405.1424) or 12.1 RU4a (12.1.4023.4080). The vulnerability results from erroneous parsing of XML data sent to the console, causing the console to send unsanitized queries to an internal database.
