Backdoor in R.I Soft Systems 4th of July Screensaver

Reported July 5, 2001, by KenPfeil.

VERSION AFFECTED

DESCRIPTION
A back door exists in the 4thof July Fireworks demo screensaver from Rhode Island Soft Systems. Bypressing the space bar on the keyboard, it's possible to circumvent thescreensaver's lock workstation function. A malicious user can make the defaultWeb browser appear with the Rhode Island Soft System Web site by using thesecurity context of the currently logged-on user. From there, the attacker canrun explorer.exe in the browser’s address window to get the desktop and to runany other program under this context. A malicious user can also exploit thisvulnerability remotely through Windows 2000 Terminal Services Advanced Client(formerly known as Terminal Services Web Client). 

VENDOR RESPONSE

Thevendor, Rhode Island SoftSystems, was notified about this vulnerability, but doesn't intend torelease a fix for this issue. To work around this problem, a user can uninstallthe demo screensaver software.

CREDIT
Discovered by SteveJohns.