Protect yourself against future threats.
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AUSCERT External Security Bulletin Redistribution
ESB-2002.202 -- CIAC TECH BULLETIN CIACTech02-003
Protecting Office for Mac X Antipiracy Server Ports
1 May 2002
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AusCERT Security Bulletin Summary
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Product: Microsoft Office
Vendor: Microsoft
Operating System: Macintosh OS X
Impact: Reduced Security
Access Required: Remote
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__________________________________________________________
The U.S. Department of Energy
Computer Incident Advisory Center
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TECHNICAL BULLETIN
Protecting Office for Mac X Antipiracy Server Ports
April 26, 2002 17:00 GMT Number CIACTech02-003
______________________________________________________________________________
PROBLEM: Microsoft Office for Macintosh OS X has an antipiracy mechanism
that secretly opens network service ports on a Macintosh system
and broadcasts version information to other systems on a single
subnet. The problem is that open network services provide
attack points for intruders and need to be controlled by users.
PLATFORM: Microsoft Office for Macintosh OS X or any part of Office for
OS X.
Site licensed versions of Office for Macintosh OS X (where all
installations have the same serial number) do not have this
mechanism enabled.
ABSTRACT: The applications in Microsoft Office for Macintosh OS X contain
a piracy detection mechanism that broadcasts access information
to port 2222 on the local subnet. Other Office applications
listen for these broadcasts and compare the product IDs to
their own to determine if there is a license violation. If a
license violation has occurred the two machines exchange
additional information, decide which of the two applications
must shut down, and shut down the offending application. The
information passed between the machines has been either hashed
or encrypted so port and serial number information is not
discernable from simply sniffing network traffic. The offending
copy of the office application is gracefully shutdown so the
user can save files and not lose anything. The difficulty is
that for each office application that is running there is an
open tcp server port at a port number greater than 3000 plus
a udp server at port 2222. These ports are opened in secret by
Office applications and remain open as long as the Office
application is running. While the Office applications only
send information to machines on the local subnet, the service
ports are open to whomever can send packets to them. These
ports have already been the cause of one vulnerability (see
Microsoft bulletin MS02-002). This paper describes how to
protect these ports from attack by outsiders.
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LINKS:
CIAC BULLETIN: http://www.ciac.org/ciac/techbull/CIACTech02-003.shtml
OTHER LINKS: MS02-002 Malformed Network Request Can Cause Office v. X
for Mac to Fail
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/
ms02-002.asp
______________________________________________________________________________
Note: While the protection mechanisms described in this paper may defeat the
piracy detection mechanism in Microsoft Office for OS X, CIAC in no way
endorses software piracy. Users are admonished to read and abide by their
license agreements.
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