Symantec's Client Intrusion Detection System (CIDS) driver may cause a system crash when interacting with a specifically-crafted Portable Executable file.
Symantec was notified of a system crash, Denial of Service (DoS) in the CIDS engine driver when interacting with a specifically-crafted portable-executable (PE) files. A malicious individual would first need to entice an authorized user to download a malformed PE file either through opening an email attachment, downloading a malicious document or application or by enticing the user to visit a web site where a malicious file could be downloaded to their system. Once downloaded, the malicious file must be manipulated on the targeted system hard drive to interact with the vulnerable CIDS engine.
Sufficiently malformed, the code would execute at the kernel-level with system privileges causing memory corruption resulting in a system crash.
Symantec engineers have addressed this in the latest CIDS engine update release effective 7/7/2016 delivered to customers via LiveUpdate with normal definition and signature updates.
Discovered by Piotr Bania of Cisco Talos. Symantec would like to thank Cisco Talos for reporting this to us and working with us as we addressed the issue.