Security alert identifies Oracle holes

Software security companies and US-Cert, the US government's computer monitoring body, have issued warnings about security vulnerabilities in Oracle software.

US-Cert cited several security flaws in Oracle products that could be used to shut down or take control of vulnerable systems or to corrupt or steal data from Oracle databases.

The holes have been detected in a number of Oracle products, including versions of its 8i, 9i and 10g Database, Application Server and Enterprise Manager software.

A bulletin posted posted by Oracle this week also released a patch for the vulnerabilities.

Oracle said that the holes in its Database Server and Application Server were rated "high" risk and that exploiting some required network access, but not a valid database user account.

Holes in the Enterprise Manager were rated "medium" by Oracle and required both network access to the vulnerable machine and a valid user account to take advantage of them.

An alert issued by Next Generation Security Software said the vulnerabilities include SQL injection attacks, denial of service attacks and buffer overflows.

Next Generation is withholding details about the vulnerabilities for three months to give Oracle database administrators the time to test and patch vulnerable systems.

Oracle "strongly" recommends that customers apply the patch, pointing out that there is no work-around that addresses the vulnerabilities.

Paul Roberts writes for IDG News Service