On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:27:32 +0000
"Rai, Pravesh R (STSD)" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> We are using Apache 2.2.21 with our product in HP. As we all know that during 
> some failure operations, Windows OS stores the memory dump as .mdmp & .hdmp 
> files. In our case we have observed credentials (in plain text) in those dump 
> files, which is a security concern for us.

Thanks for pointing this out.

What credentials specifically?  If that's HTTP Basic Auth
(or equivalent level of non-encryption) the strings from the
HTTP Request headers will exist in memory with the potential
to appear in a dump!

> Have tried to modify few Apache source files, like:
> 
> httpd\srclib\apr-util\buckets\apr_brigade.c (diff file w.r.t. to Apache 
> 2.2.21: diff_apr_brigade.c.txt)

Your diff looks fine, but note that anything under apr or apr-util
belongs to the APR project, not to httpd.

> httpd\modules\ssl\ssl_engine_io.c (diff file w.r.t. to Apache 2.2.21: 
> diff_ssl_engine_io.c.txt)

That one sets to NULL after a memmove.  Since memmove supports overlapping
source and destination buffers, you could be introducing complex edge-case
side-effects.  Have you checked?

> Though the changes are minor & mainly intended to clean the buffer, but so 
> far our Security testing team has not found any plain text credentials in any 
> of our application dump files. Please go through these changes & let us know 
> your views.

I can imagine there might be other such instances in the code.

-- 
Nick Kew

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