This issue can affect any product or platform running Junos OS.

A lazy race condition in RPC allows an authenticated user to elevate privileges to take ownership of any file on the device. This can allow an attacker to read, delete, or modify any file on the system. If the attacker modifies the files that control authentication operations, the attacker can potentially gain root access.

This issue was found during internal product security testing.

Juniper SIRT is not aware of any malicious exploitation of this vulnerability.

No other Juniper Networks products or platforms are affected by this issue.

This issue has been assigned CVE-2016-1267.

The following software releases have been updated to resolve this specific issue: Junos OS 12.1X44-D55, 12.1X46-D40, 12.1X47-D25, 12.3R11, 12.3X48-D20, 13.2R8, 13.2X51-D39, 13.2X51-D40, 13.3R7, 14.1R6, 14.1X53-D30, 14.2R3-S4, 14.2R4, 15.1F2, 15.1R2, 15.1X49-D20, 16.1R1, and all subsequent releases.

This issue is being tracked as PR 1078027 and is visible on the Customer Support website.

KB16765 - "In which releases are vulnerabilities fixed?" describes which release vulnerabilities are fixed as per our End of Engineering and End of Life support policies.

Methods which may reduce the risk for exploitation of this problem, but which do not resolve the underlying problem include:

• Disabling...
  
  • any existing Junos OS Op scripts or removing them from the environment.
  • JUNOScript administration to the system.
  • Netconf administration to the system.
  • XNM services.
• Only allow access to XNM, Netconf from trusted administrative networks and hosts.
• Only allow trusted accounts access to execuite Op scripts.
• Using administrative jump boxes with no internet access and employ anti-scripting techniques.
• In addition to the recommendations listed above, it is good security practice to limit the exploitable attack surface of critical infrastructure networking equipment. Use access lists or firewall filters to limit access to the devices as listed above.

How to obtain fixed software:
Security vulnerabilities in Junos are fixed in the next available Maintenance Release of each supported Junos version. In some cases, a Maintenance Release is not planned to be available in an appropriate time-frame. For these cases, Service Releases are made available in order to be more timely. Security Advisory and Security Notices will indicate which Maintenance and Service Releases contain fixes for the issues described. Upon request to JTAC, customers will be provided download instructions for a Service Release. Although Juniper does not provide formal Release Note documentation for a Service Release, a list of "PRs fixed" can be provided on request.

Modification History:

2016-04-13: Initial publication
2017-03-05: Category restructure.

6.7 (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

Information for how Juniper Networks uses CVSS can be found at KB 16446 "Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and Juniper's Security Advisories."