Another Security Flaw Found in Symantec's Veritas BackupAnother Security Flaw Found in Symantec's Veritas Backup

Another vulnerability in Symantec's backup software was made public Wednesday. Although no exploit has yet been seen in Veritas NetBackup, and no increase in port scanning has been tracked, Symantec still urged customers to patch the product as soon as possible.

Versions 4.5, 5.0, 5.1, and 6.0 of NetBackup on all platforms are affected, said Symantec in a security advisory, because of a bug in the Java authentication service "bpjava-msvc." A successful attack against the vulnerability could let an attacker remotely compromise the system, then run his own code on the machine. Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia rated the flaw as "Moderately critical," the middle ranking in its five-step scheme.

Tipping Point, which in July debuted a bounty-for-bug program dubbed "Zero Day Initiative," was credited with the vulnerability's discovery. It first informed Symantec of the problem Sept. 12, Tipping Point said in its own advisory. Patches are available on the Symantec support site, but if they cannot be immediately deployed, the Cupertino, Calif.-based security company recommended that administrators block external network access on TCP port 13722 to stymie any attacks.

Symantec's DeepSight Threat network is keeping watch on that port, but so it's seen no significant increase in scanning.

Still, users should move fast.

"Historically, Veritas software such as Backupexec Server has been heavily targeted by attackers," said Symantec in a DeepSight alert issued Thursday.

As recently as August, another Veritas product, Backup Exec, was found vulnerable to attack. In that case, the flaw was a zero-day vulnerability, meaning an exploit was in circulation before a patch was available. Symantec patched the bug two days later.

In June, Backup Exec was hit with seven vulnerabilities one of which was quickly attacked with an exploit tucked inside the Toxbot bot worm.