Software Engineering Institute

The AppleFileServer provides Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) services for clients and servers. This protocol allows users to share files over the network. By default the AFP service is not enabled. There is a buffer overflow vulnerability in the way the AppleFileServer handles certain authentication requests. By supplying a specially crafted PathName argument during authentication, an unauthenticated, remote attacker could execute arbitrary code.

According to the @stake advisory:
There is a pre-authentication, remotely exploitable stack buffer overflow that allows an attacker to obtain administrative privileges. The overflow occurs when parsing the PathName argument from LoginExt packet requesting authentication using the Cleartext Password User Authentication Method (UAM). The PathName argument is encoded as one-byte specifying the string type, two-bytes specifying the string length, and finally the string itself. A string of type AFPName (0x3) that is longer than the length declared in the packet will overflow the fixed-size stack buffer.

An unauthenticated, remote attacker could execute arbitrary code.

Apply Patch

Apple has issued an advisory to address this issue. For further details, please see the Apple Security Advisory (Security Update 2004-05-03).

Disable AppleFileServer

Until a patch can be applied, you may wish to disable the AppleFileServer.