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Security Advisory: Lotus Notes Stored Form Vulnerability
Date: 8th February 2001
Author: Chris Jones (aka dp) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Versions Affected: At present only Lotus Notes v4.6 has been tested
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----[ Exploit Introduction ] ------------------------------------------
Due to the design flaws of Lotus Notes databases, a user with sufficient knowledge can
craft a Lotus Notes Email in such a way that the recipient only has to open the email
or view the email using the preview panes to become infected or to run the arbitrary
code.
The problem lies in Lotus Notes ability to allow developers to create forms that do
not rely on a specific template in a database (like normal emails) but instead uses
its own in built templates that travel within the document. Using these methods an
experienced Lotus Notes developer could create an email enabled worm specifically for
Lotus Notes networks. Which could do anything from delete a few files to granting ACL
rights to the persons mail box (so all emails could be viewed) to retrieving the users
cached passwords or similar information. Another key point that allows this exploit to
occur is that the design of the mailbox database has by default been allowed to accept
stored forms.
----[ Exploit Generation ] ---------------------------------------------
To generate the email a malicious user will need to modify the default 'memo' form's
design - which does require a developer's edition of Lotus Notes. The malicious user
then has to modify the forms' properties so the 'Store form in Document' action is
checked. The malicious user then has a choice he could insert code into the forms
'PostOpen' event, which requires Lotus Script programming knowledge or he can go the
easy method and modify the forms 'Launch' properties which allows you to launch the
first document attachment when opened which could be absolutely anything.
----[ Quick Fix ] ------------------------------------------------------
There is a very quick and very easy method of disabling this feature and that is to
modify the mailbox database properties so that the 'Allow stored forms' is unchecked.
This will stop any forms of this attack.
----[ Platforms Tested ] -----------------------------------------------
We tested this exploit out using Lotus Notes version 4.6 but any version of Lotus
Notes 4 should be affected, as I am sure lower and higher versions would be as well.
In our experiment I was able to gain manager access to someone else's Email Box using
4 Lines of Lotus Script code.
----[ Other Notes ] ----------------------------------------------------
Using Lotus Script you can even change the source address of the email to fool the
user into believing that the infected email came from a trusted source. You could even
go so far as to code the email so it looks at the target's mailbox and creates a
duplicate document of his most recent email, so it looks as some other user has sent
him two copies of the same email.
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