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Symantec Patches Code Execution Flaw in Email Security Product

Symantec has released an update for its Messaging Gateway email security product to address remote code execution and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities.

The more serious of the security holes, tracked as CVE-2017-6327 and classified as high severity, is a remote code execution flaw discovered by Philip Pettersson.

Symantec has released an update for its Messaging Gateway email security product to address remote code execution and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities.

The more serious of the security holes, tracked as CVE-2017-6327 and classified as high severity, is a remote code execution flaw discovered by Philip Pettersson.

“The Symantec Messaging Gateway can encounter an issue of remote code execution, which describes a situation whereby an individual may obtain the ability to execute commands remotely on a target machine or in a target process. In this type of occurrence, after gaining access to the system, the attacker may attempt to elevate their privileges,” Symantec said in its advisory.

The second flaw, rated low severity and identified as CVE-2017-6328, is a CSRF weakness identified by Dhiraj Mishra. The security bug allows an attacker to execute commands via a trusted user by getting the victim to access a specially crafted website.

The vulnerabilities affect Symantec Messaging Gateway versions prior to 10.6.3-267, which addresses the issues. In addition to applying patches, the company has advised customers to restrict access to administrative and management systems, and run applications with the lowest level of privilege needed.

There is no indication that any of these vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild. US-CERT has also released an alert to encourage organizations to review Symantec’s advisory and install the necessary updates.

Software developed by Symantec, similar to the products of other security solutions providers, is often found to have vulnerabilities. In the past few years, white hat hackers have disclosed potentially serious flaws affecting the company’s Antivirus Engine, Endpoint Protection and various enterprise security products.

One of the most interesting weaknesses was discovered last year by Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy. The expert found a critical Antivirus Engine vulnerability that could have been exploited for arbitrary code execution simply by sending a specially crafted file to the victim.

Related: Attackers Can Hijack Security Products via Microsoft Tool

Related: Security Product Flaws Allow Attackers to Compromise Systems

Related: Cisco Patches 9 Flaws in Email Security Appliance

Related: Hackers Can Hijack Dell Email Security Appliances

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

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