Pete Finnigan's Oracle Security Weblog

I got an email from Jakub Wartak a few days ago but due to travelling last week in Sweden to teach my class "How to perform an Oracle database security audit" I have not had time to look at it until today. Last week was great in Stockholm as I was able to meet Patrik Karlsson - cqure.net and http://www.toolcrypt.org/index.html - (broken link ) 0rm - Toolcrypt.org - orabf for a good chat and some beers.

Back to Jakubs post. He has made a post on his blog titled http://vnull.pcnet.com.pl/blog/?p=92 - (broken link) Oracle Database Vault, not so 0-day anymore, privilege escalation using ptrace(2) from UNIX account that describes a http://vnull.pcnet.com.pl/codez/ora_dv_mem_off.c - (broken link) C program - ora_dv_mem_off.c that can be used to bypass database vault.

This bug highlights, the author states, the fact that database vault does not protect DBA access where the DBA has operating system accounts.

It is an interesting post with some detailed C code exploiting the use of ptrace() to access data and turn off DV. This post somewhat reminds me of what Tanel Poder did over a year ago with the hack to fix the SYSDBA flag (bit) in the PGA using the _oradbg_pathname parameter to call an external debugger to flip the bits.

Nice post Jakub.