CVE-2004-0445 in Norton Internet Security
Summary
by MITRE
The SYMDNS.SYS driver in Symantec Norton Internet Security and Professional 2002 through 2004, Norton Personal Firewall 2002 through 2004, Norton AntiSpam 2004, Client Firewall 5.01 and 5.1.1, and Client Security 1.0 through 2.0 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption from infinite loop) via a DNS response with a compressed name pointer that points to itself.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/19/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2004-0445 represents a critical denial of service flaw within Symantec's security suite products, specifically affecting versions of Norton Internet Security, Professional, Personal Firewall, AntiSpam, Client Firewall, and Client Security from 2002 through 2004. This issue stems from improper handling of DNS response packets containing compressed name pointers that create circular references, leading to infinite processing loops within the SYMDNS.SYS kernel driver. The flaw operates at the network protocol level where the driver fails to validate the integrity of DNS name compression mechanisms, allowing malicious actors to craft specially formatted DNS responses that trigger recursive pointer resolution.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability exploits the DNS name compression algorithm used to reduce packet size by referencing previously transmitted domain names through pointer mechanisms. When a DNS response contains a compressed name pointer that references itself, the SYMDNS.SYS driver enters an infinite loop attempting to resolve the circular reference, consuming excessive CPU resources and effectively rendering the affected system unavailable. This behavior aligns with CWE-835, which describes the weakness of an infinite loop or recursion without proper termination conditions. The vulnerability demonstrates poor input validation and lacks proper bounds checking when processing DNS name compression structures, creating a path for malicious input to cause system resource exhaustion.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents a significant risk to enterprise and individual users running affected Symantec products, as it can be exploited remotely without requiring authentication or elevated privileges. Attackers can simply send malicious DNS responses to trigger the denial of service condition, causing systems to become unresponsive or consume all available CPU cycles. The impact extends beyond simple service disruption to potentially affect network availability and user productivity, particularly in environments where these security products are deployed across multiple endpoints. This vulnerability also represents a classic example of a resource exhaustion attack pattern that can be leveraged in broader network disruption campaigns.
The exploitation of this vulnerability aligns with several ATT&CK tactics including TA0043 (Reconnaissance) and TA0040 (Resource Hijacking) where adversaries can identify vulnerable systems and consume their computational resources. Organizations using affected Symantec products should implement immediate mitigations including network segmentation to limit DNS traffic exposure, deployment of updated security patches from Symantec, and monitoring for unusual CPU consumption patterns. The vulnerability highlights the importance of proper input validation in kernel-level drivers and demonstrates how seemingly benign protocol features can become attack vectors when not properly secured. Network administrators should consider implementing DNS filtering mechanisms and monitoring for anomalous DNS response patterns to detect potential exploitation attempts.