Officials at the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) have identified a security vulnerability in CA's widely OEM'd BrightStor ARCserve Backup product, which they warn could leave users' systems open to attack.

Officials say that the flaw affects the software's Tape Engine feature, which allows ARCserve Backup products to use tape drives for storage. According to US-Cert, the tape engine contains a vulnerability that is caused by incorrect handling of Remote Procedure Call (RPC) requests, which allow programs to request services across a network.

CERT's Website warns that the vulnerability could be exploited by sending a malformed RPC request to port 6502/tcp on a vulnerable system. In the worst case scenario, officials add, a hacker could use this flaw to execute code on users' systems, which often results in a denial-of-service (DOS) attack. (See Symantec Tracks Cybercrime Rise, Check Point Protects Against BGP DOS , and Cisco Unveils DDOS Protection Solution.)

DOS attacks continue to wreak havoc amongst users. (See Symantec Tracks Cybercrime Rise, and Massive DOS Attacks Against ISPs on the Rise.) Earlier this year, for example, Sun's on-demand grid computing service got smacked with a DOS attack on its first day of service. (See Sun Grid Weathers DOS Attack and Sun Unveils Grid Portal.)

The vendor says that it is looking into the problem. "CA is aware of a vulnerability report describing a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in the Tape Engine component of CA BrightStor ARCserve Backup," explained spokesman Michael Kornspan in an email. The company continues to investigate; there is no word on when a patch might be issued. "Once we conclude our investigation and verify the reported vulnerability, we will provide remediation."

CA has several OEM partners for its ARCserve Backup product. The software, for example, is bundled with Iomega's REV SBS Data Protection offering, and has also been integrated with NEC's ExpressCluster solution. (See Iomega Creates Bundle and Iomega Ships With CA .)

Earlier this year, CA snapped up application availability specialist XOsoft for a reported $100 million in an attempt to boost its data protection story. (See CA Buys XOsoft.) The acquisition was partly driven by CA's desire to integrate XOsoft with ARCserve Backup for protecting and recovering critical applications (See Storage Shopping Spree.)

At least one analyst is urging CA to tackle the reported backup flaw as a matter of urgency. "It's something that CA should be addressing and issuing a patch for right away," says Mike Karp, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, adding that the vulnerability represents yet another tape technology challenge.

"To me, it's a symptom of the fundamental problem of transferring data to tape," he told Byte & Switch. "The trail of custody on tapes is always bad," added Karp, highlighting the high-profile storage snafus at Time Warner and Iron Mountain. (See Tape Security Trips Up Users, A Tale of Lost Tapes, and Iron Mountain Keeps Truckin'.)

Until the flaw is fixed, CERT is urging users to focus attention on their firewalls in an attempt to tackle the ARCserve flaw. "Restricting access to port 6502/tcp at the network perimeter may mitigate the impact of this vulnerability," warns the agency in a note on its Web site. The scope of the vulnerability may also extend across different versions of ARCserve Backup, according to CERT.

The SANS Institute has warned that hackers are increasingly targeting weaknesses in backup and recovery applications. According to analysts, vulnerabilities could be exploited to attack systems running backup servers and clients, which opens up the possibility of an attacker gaining access to sensitive backed-up data. (See Backup Poses Risk, SANS Warns.)

— James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch