Is it really The End?
Last week, we stated that, due to lack of anything even close to the amount
of money needed to pay the LWN staff, the publication of the LWN.net Weekly
Edition would end on August 1. Since then, quite a few things have
happened, including:
These developments have caused us to rethink our plans in a way we honestly
had not expected. Here is a summary of where we are at.
$25,000 is a nice pile of cash for a little company to have in the bank,
but it is important to keep in mind that it is not enough to keep us going
for all that long. Running LWN currently involves five people (Jonathan
Corbet: front and Kernel pages, site code, "executive editor"; Forrest
Cook: Development and Press pages, system administration; Rebecca Sobol:
Distributions and Commerce pages; Dennis Tenney: Security page and
corporate bureaucracy; Dave Whitinger: business development, ad sales and
delivery), all of whom are experienced software engineers. These people
have children and mortgages, and most work full time producing LWN. They
can not be expected to do it for free, even though that is exactly
what they have been doing for some months now.
So the LWN staff needs things like salaries and health insurance. A
minimal amount of money to provide these for the current staff is about
$15,000 per month - and that level will still likely lead to loss of staff
eventually. But it is a starting figure to aim for.
All of our estimates on possible subscription revenue fell far below that
amount. The numbers came out of gnumeric, after all, they had to be
true... and besides, none of our projected numbers have ever turned out to
be too conservative in the past. It was on this basis that we decided it
was time to pull the plug.
From the donations and feedback we have gotten, we have concluded that
maybe our numbers were a little too conservative, that maybe
subscriptions could bring in more than we thought. As a result, we are now
thinking through plans for the implementation of a subscription-based LWN.
Here, in bullet form, is the core of what we are thinking:
- Initially, the Weekly Edition would be the content that lives behind
the subscription gate. Subscribers would have immediate access to the
Weekly Edition when it comes out Wednesday evening; free access would
be opened up later, perhaps the following Monday. We would, however,
immediately start work on expanding the content available to
subscribers; we have a lot of fun ideas for things we could do.
- The rest of our current content, including the "daily updates" which
now make up the front page, would remain free.
- Certain other new features would be available to subscribers only. At
the top of the list is the long-requested email delivery option for
the Weekly Edition. Content in PDF format and perhaps even an option
for delivery of a print version, are on the list, though they would
have to come later. We are also considering setting aside a
percentage of our text ad exposures for subscribers who have something
to broadcast.
- We are still working on pricing. People who have donated to LWN would
be able to use their donation to obtain a subscription.
The decision to go to subscriptions is hard; restricted content is a
difficult fit in the world of free software. We will certainly lose a
great many readers by imposing subscriptions. But...if we go off the air,
we lose all of our readers. It is also still not clear to us that
subscriptions are sufficient to cover our costs. The thinking at the
moment is that some sort of stable base of (presumably corporate)
sponsorship will be required, along with whatever advertising revenue we
can come up with. Without that base, it will be hard for us to proceed.
The end result is that we are going to take next week away from the
production of LWN to think long and hard about what we are going to do, to
pursue sponsorship contacts, and to hack madly on the site code to actually
implement a subscription scheme. The LWN Weekly Edition will not be
published next week, though a subset may be available. At the end of the
week, we hope to have a plan in place that will let us move forward, and
which will stop trying the patience of our many loyal readers who have been
waiting for us to get our act together.
Thank you all for your overwhelming support.
Comments (65 posted)
A 'Statement of Assurance' on SELinux patents
The
June 13, 2002 LWN Weekly
Edition looked at the "type enforcement" patents held by Secure
Computing Corporation, and how those patents could threaten the
distribution and use of the NSA SELinux distribution. Now SCC has issued
a new statement with regard to those patents:
...it is the policy of Secure Computing to retain and enforce its
rights in all of its patents and other intellectual property. In
this case, we have decided to make an exception to that policy, and
to support the reasonable expectations of the open source community
SCC has also posted on its website a "statement of assurance" (in PDF
format) with the details of its policy toward SELinux. This statement
is worth a close look; many users may find it rather less than assuring.
Here is the core of what SCC promises:
Subject to the limitations described in this Statement of
Assurance, Secure Computing will not assert the Subject Patent Rights with
respect to any use, modification, or distribution of SELinux
software that is permitted by, and is in compliance with, the terms
and conditions of Version 2 of the GNU General Public License.
In case that isn't clear enough, consider this other paragraph from the
Statement:
No license is granted in this Statement of Assurance with respect
to the Subject Patents, or any other patent or other intellectual
property right, or software or other product.
Other companies which have tried to make software patents work with free
software (i.e. FSMLabs, Red Hat) have licensed the patent(s) for the uses
they permit. SCC has done no such thing; they just say they won't come
after you if you meet the requirements. You're still legally infringing
the patent, SCC just agrees to look the other way.
If you were thinking about using SELinux in a product, or as part of a
larger service offering, you should already be pretty nervous about a
"statement of assurance" that does not actually grant the right to use the
relevant patents. There is more, though. For example:
Secure Computing reserves the right to assert the Subject Patent
Rights with respect to VPN gateways, perimeter and distributed
firewalls, URL filtering, authentication and authorization for
applications, hosts, and devices, and other products, features and
functions that are beyond the scope of the Assurance. The use or
distribution of such products, features, or functions with SELinux
will not make the Assurance applicable to them.
Translated into English, this phrase is telling us that the "statement of
assurance" only applies if you're not actually doing anything related to
security. Or anything else, for that matter: what Linux system doesn't
handle "authorization for devices"?
There are a few other details that jump out when one reads this "statement
of assurance":
- It only applies to SELinux; no other free software may use the
patents. Neither can "software that merely interoperates with
SELinux." The obvious next question is: what, exactly, is
SELinux, and what "merely interoperates" with SELinux? Just about any
application could be excluded by this language.
- SCC reserves the right to sell its patents to somebody else without
requiring them to uphold what few guarantees this statement provides. When
SCC gets tired of SELinux, it need only sell the patents to a
subsidiary and it's all over.
- SCC states that it may have "other patents," and that those patents
are not covered by the statement.
And, of course, if you still feel that this statement is sufficiently
assuring, bear in mind that it's not a contract, it's just another
transient promise hosted on a web site. SCC's previous web-hosted
statement, remember, was:
We plan to provide the security enhancements made to Linux under
this project to the community without restriction in full
compliance with the letter and spirit of the GPL.... There will be
no restrictions on the use of TE [type enforcement] by the Linux
open source community. We believe that leveraging the resources of
the Linux community is the best way to develop robust security for
Linux.
That promise vanished from SCC's site in June, though it can still be found
via
the web archive project; it has been replaced by something that, by any
account, is not "without restriction." What reason is there for anybody to
believe that this "statement of assurance" will be any less ephemeral?
It seems that SCC is trying to create the appearance of working with the
free software community without actually giving anything away. Instead,
the company has used U.S. taxpayer's money to embed its own proprietary
technology into what was a free system. SELinux brought a lot of energy to
the secure Linux development process; among other things, it was one of the
driving forces behind the development of the Linux Security Module patches,
which are currently being integrated into the 2.5 kernel. SELinux itself,
however, will have a hard time recovering from its patent problems. The
secure Linux that we use in the
future may have to based on some other technology.
Comments (5 posted)
No letters to the editor
We did not receive much in the way of letters to the editor this week, so
there is no letters page. We did, however, get a great deal of reader
feedback, much of which is well worth reading. It can be found in the
comments to
last week's "The End"
announcement, and our
first and
second updates posted over the last week.
Comments (3 posted)
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Security
Thanks for reading
As we journey into an unknown future for LWN, I wanted to take this
opportunity to say "Thank You" to everyone who has read the security
page in 2002.
It has been my pleasure to assemble information for you each week
that has, I sincerely hope, been of real value.
Safe Travels,
Dennis Tenney, LWN.net Security Page Editor
Comments (5 posted)
Security news
Security warning draws DMCA threat (News.com)
Here's
a News.com
article about a new attempt to use the DMCA to suppress security
vulnerability information. This time the DMCA is being wielded by HP.
"
In a letter sent on Monday, an HP vice president warned SnoSoft, a
loosely organized research collective, that its members 'could be fined up
to $500,000 and imprisoned for up to five years' for its role in publishing
information on a bug that lets an intruder take over a Tru64 Unix
system." (Thanks to Christof Damian).
Comments (6 posted)
Copyright as Cudgel (Chronicle)
The Chronicle of Higher Education
takes a look at the
DMCA. "
Since 1998, the DMCA has revealed itself to be a
failure. It has not been effective at preventing piracy in cyberspace, yet
it has managed to stifle harmless and even beneficial uses of material for
research and teaching."
Comments (1 posted)
Security reports
Firewall circumvention possible with Mozilla
This XWT Foundation Security Advisory warns that
a security flaw in JavaScript's
"Same Origin Policy" (SOP) allows
any JavaScript-enabled web
browser, including Mozilla, to be used by an attacker to
retrieve content from any server behind a firewall.
The exploit depends on getting a client browser behind the
firewall to visit a maliciously crafted web page.
Full Story (comments: none)
Slackware security updates
We don't have advisories from Slackware, but
the
latest changelog notice shows updates to mod_ssl, libmm, the DNS
resolver libraries, OpenSSL, and PHP.
Comments (2 posted)
Fake Identd - remote root exploit vulnerability
Tomi Ollila's Fake Identd is reported to have a remote root exploit vulnerability.
"Fake Identd is a small standalone ident server with static replies. It is
designed to be suitable for firewalls, IP masquerading hosts, etc."
Full Story (comments: none)
sendform.cgi Form Mailer v1.45 fixes directory traversal vulnerability
Version 1.45 of Rod Clark's
sendform.cgi Form Mailer fixes
this directory transversal vulnerability reported by Steve Christey
with credits to Brian Caswell and Erik Tayler.
Full Story (comments: none)
ezContents multiple vulnerabilities
Ulf Harnhammar reports multiple vulnerabilities in
ezContents.
ezContents is an Open-Source website content management system based on PHP and MySQL. Features include maintaining menus and sub-menus, adding authors that write contents, permissions, workflow, and layout possibilities for the entire look of the site by simple use of settings.
Full Story (comments: 1)
php dotProject by pass authentication vulnerability
dotProject Beta version 0.2.1.5 is reported to have a anthentication
bypass vulnerability which allows anyone to login as Admin.
dotproject is a PHP+MySQL beta level web based project management tool that dotmarketing started in Dec. 2000 then left fallow for about 10 months. It is about 50% there (there being a very high quality product, not some half-baked simple form-into-db pages). With a little open source love, dotproject could be an MS Project killer. While dotproject was specifically designed for dotmarketing's needs, it could probably be extremely useful for any sort of service agency that requires the ability to track a project to completion.
Full Story (comments: none)
Uninets StatsPlus 1.25 script injection vulnerabilities
Brain Rawt reports script injection vulnerabilities in
Uninets StatsPlus
version 1.25.
StatsPlus
"provides a convient way to get indepth statistics about
visitors to your site" which
doesn't appear to have been updated since 1998.
Full Story (comments: none)
(Proprietary product) W3Mail remote access and download vulnerabilities
Tim Brown reports a
"medium security hole"
in
W3Mail from
CascadeSoft.
Full Story (comments: none)
New vulnerabilities
HylaFAX 4.1.3 fixes multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | hylafax |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2001-1034
|
| Created: | July 30, 2002 |
Updated: | October 9, 2002 |
| Description: |
The HylaFAX team has
released version 4.1.3 fixing
denial of service, elevated system privilege and possible
remote code execution vulnerabilities.
HylaFAX is a mature (est. 1991) enterprise-class open-source software
package for sending and receiving facsimiles as well as for sending
alpha-numeric pages. It runs on a wide variety of UNIX-like platforms
including Linux, BSD (including Mac OS X), SunOS and Solaris, SCO, IRIX,
AIX, and HP-UX.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
OpenSSL remotely-exploitable buffer overflow vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | OpenSSL |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0655
CAN-2002-0656
CAN-2002-0657
CAN-2002-0659
|
| Created: | July 30, 2002 |
Updated: | September 24, 2002 |
| Description: |
Four remotely-exploitable buffer overflows were found in OpenSSL versions 0.9.7 and 0.9.6d and earlier by a DARPA sponsored security audit.
Both client and server applications are affected.
The vulnerabilities are described in this security alert from the OpenSSL team.
A nasty exploit for one of the vulnerabilities is described in
CERT Advisory CA-2002-27 Apache/mod_ssl Worm.
Compromise by the Apache/mod_ssl worm indicates that a remote attacker
can execute arbitrary code as the apache user on the victim system. It
may be possible for an attacker to subsequently leverage a local
privilege escalation exploit in order to gain root access to the
victim system. Furthermore, the DDoS capabilities included in the
Apache/mod_ssl worm allow victim systems to be used as platforms to
attack other systems.
If you haven't already, applying an update is a very good thing
to do today.
Mitel Networks has an update available which
closes this vulnerabilty for their SME Server software.
CERT Advisory CA-2002-23 Multiple Vulnerabilities In OpenSSL |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Local root vulnerability in chfn
| Package(s): | util-linux |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0638
|
| Created: | July 29, 2002 |
Updated: | October 30, 2002 |
| Description: |
chfn (change finger information) is one of the utilities in
the util-linux package.
The BindView RAZOR Team has discovered a local root vulnerability
in chfn which is described in the Bindview Advisory.
Under certain conditions, "a
carefully crafted attack sequence can be performed to exploit a
complex file locking and modification race present in this utility,
and, as a result, alter /etc/passwd to escalate privileges in the
system." The conditions include a password file, /etc/passwd, over 4 kilobytes and locating the attacker's account record in any
but the last 4 kB chunk of the file.
CERT/CC Vulnerability Note VU#405955 util-linux package vulnerable to privilege escalation when "ptmptmp" file is not removed properly when using "chfn" utility |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Temporary file vulnerability in mm library
| Package(s): | mm |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0658
|
| Created: | July 30, 2002 |
Updated: | August 14, 2002 |
| Description: |
The OSSP mm library (libmm) is frequently used in Apache
setups using mod_ssl and/or mod_php.
A temporary file vulnerabiity in OSSP mm library (libmm) before
version 1.2.0
permits a local Apache user to gain privileges.
It can be exploited to obtain root privilege in some circumstances.
Upgrading sooner, rather than later, is recommended.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Updated vulnerabilities
Heap corruption vulnerability in at
| Package(s): | at at, sudo, xchat |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0004
|
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | May 15, 2003 |
| Description: |
The at command has a
potentially exploitable heap corruption bug.
(First LWN report: January 17th).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Denial of service vulnerability in version 9 of BIND
| Package(s): | bind |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0400
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | August 19, 2002 |
| Description: |
Here is an advisory from the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)
regarding the denial of service vulnerability in version 9 of the BIND
nameserver, up to 9.2.1. An attacker can send a properly crafted packet
which triggers a check within BIND and causes it to shut down. The
vulnerability can not be exploited for any purpose beyond denial of
service, but that is bad enough; if you are running BIND 9, an upgrade
is probably a good idea.
Note that many or most systems out there will still be running
BIND 8, and thus will not be vulnerable.
News articles on the vulnerability appear in the
Register
and
Network World Fusion News. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
bind buffer overflow vulnerability in DNS resolver libraries
| Package(s): | bind glibc |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0651
CAN-2002-0684
|
| Created: | July 8, 2002 |
Updated: | September 30, 2003 |
| Description: |
The BIND 4.9.8-OW2 patch and BIND 4.9.9 release (and thus 4.9.9-OW1)
include fixes for a libc related vulnerability which does not
affect Linux. Updates from
the Internet Software Consortium (ISC)
are available from here.
No release or branch of Openwall GNU/*/Linux (Owl) is known to be
affected, due to Olaf Kirch's fixes for this problem getting into the
GNU C library more than two years ago.
Unfortunatly that does not mean that Linux systems are not vulnerable.
Similar code, without Olaf Firch's fixes,
is in the glibc getnetbyXXX functions.
These functions are described in the SuSE alert as
"
used by very few applications only, such as ifconfig and ifuser,
which makes exploits less likely."
CERT Advisory: CA-2002-19
Buffer Overflow in Multiple DNS Resolver Libraries
CAN-2002-0651
CAN-2002-0684 |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
Ethereal buffer overflow, infinite loop and memory management vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | ethereal |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0012
CAN-2002-0013
CAN-2002-0353
CAN-2002-0401
CAN-2002-0402
CAN-2002-0403
CAN-2002-0404
|
| Created: | June 12, 2002 |
Updated: | October 27, 2002 |
| Description: |
Ethereal 0.9.4
was released
on May 19, 2002 fixing four potential security issues in Ethereal 0.9.3:
- The SMB dissector could potentially dereference a NULL pointer in two cases.
- The X11 dissector could potentially overflow a buffer while parsing keysyms.
- The DNS dissector could go into an infinite loop while reading a malformed packet.
- The GIOP dissector could potentially allocate large amounts of memory.
No known exploits exist "in the wild" at the present time for any of these issues.
Ethereal 0.9.2 has several packet handling vulnerabilities
that are best avoided by upgrading to 0.9.4.
The PROTOS test
suite found some flaws in SNMP and LDAP protocols support.
Malformed packets could also crash ethereal 0.9.2 due to a
ASN.1 zero-length g_malloc problem.
The zlib "double free" vulnerability
was addressed by the updates for that bug from many distributors. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
GNU fileutils race condition
| Package(s): | fileutils ucdsnmp |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0435
|
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | May 16, 2003 |
| Description: |
A race
condition in rm may cause the root user to delete the whole filesystem.
The problem exists in the version of rm in
fileutils
4.1 stable and 4.1.6 development version. A patch
is available.
(First LWN
report: May 2).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Buffer overflow in groff
| Package(s): | groff |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0003
|
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | December 9, 2002 |
| Description: |
The groff package has a buffer overflow
vulnerability; if it is used with the print system, it is conceivably
exploitable remotely.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
UW imapd remotely exploitable buffer overflow
| Package(s): | imap |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0379
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | December 20, 2002 |
| Description: |
UW imapd versions 2000c and prior allow remote authenticated users to execute code via a buffer overflow. A malicious user can craft
a request to run commands on the server under their UID and GID.
(First LWN report: May 23). |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (2 posted)
Apache mod_ssl off-by-one local code execution and DoS vulnerability
| Package(s): | libapache-mod-ssl mod_ssl |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0653
|
| Created: | July 2, 2002 |
Updated: | August 14, 2002 |
| Description: |
Mod-ssl provides strong cryptography for the Apache webserver
via the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
A maliciously-crafted .htaccess file, may
be used by an attacker to execute arbitrary
commands as the httpd user or launch a denial of service attack.
The problem is fixed in mod_ssl 2.8.10 which is available
from here.
For more information see the announcement. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
libpng buffer overflow vulnerability
| Package(s): | libpng libpng2 libpng3 |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | July 17, 2002 |
Updated: | August 19, 2002 |
| Description: |
Versions of libpng prior to
1.2.4 and 1.0.14 have a buffer
overflow vulnerability that could lead to remote code execution.
Since libpng is used by programs that talk to the outside
world (i.e. mozilla), it is worth upgrading.
libpng is the official PNG reference library. It supports almost all PNG features, is extensible, and has been extensively tested for over five years.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (2 posted)
LPRng accepts jobs from any host.
| Package(s): | LPRng |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0378
|
| Created: | June 12, 2002 |
Updated: | October 31, 2002 |
| Description: |
Matthew Caron pointed out that LPRng's default configuration accepts job submissions from any host.
This could be an especially annoying vulnerability for adminstrators
with systems exposed to the general public.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Mailman 2.0.11 fixes two cross-site scripting vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | mailman |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0388
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | August 28, 2002 |
| Description: |
Barry A. Warsaw announced
the release of Mailman 2.0.11
"which fixes two
cross-site scripting exploits, one reported by "office" in the admin
login page, and another reported by Tristan Roddis in the Pipermail
index summaries.
It is recommended that all sites upgrade their 2.0.x systems to this
version."
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
PHP Remote Compromise/DOS Vulnerability
| Package(s): | mod_php4 |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | July 22, 2002 |
Updated: | February 18, 2003 |
| Description: |
PHP 4.2.0 and 4.2.1 have an error in the handling of POST requests which
can lead to the corruption of memory, and the usual bad consequences. According to this alert, the vulnerability can only be used for denial of service on x86 systems - there is no way to get it to run exploit code. SPARC/Solaris systems are apparently vulnerable to full remote compromise.
According to the CERT Advisory,
almost every Linux distributor, it seems, ships older (and thus not vulnerable) versions of PHP.
Note that, sometimes, systems thought to be safe from remote compromise turn out to be vulnerable to a modified attack, so x86 users should not relax too much. The solution, for those systems with PHP
4.2.0 or 4.2.1 installed,
is to upgrade to PHP 4.2.2.
For more information see the alert from
the discover of the vulnerability, Stefan Esser of e-matters GmbH,
or the security
advisory from the php team.
CERT Advisory: CA-2002-21 Vulnerability in PHP |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
Mozilla XMLHttpRequest file disclosure vulnerability
| Package(s): | mozilla |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0354
|
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | October 18, 2002 |
| Description: |
This XMLHttpRequest security
bug impacts all Mozilla-based browsers. "The bug is found in versions of
Mozilla from 0.9.7 to 0.9.9 on various operating
system platforms, and in Netscape versions 6.1 and
higher."
(First LWN
report: May 2).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
String format bug in pam_ldap logging
| Package(s): | nss_ldap |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0374
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | October 29, 2002 |
| Description: |
The nss_ldap package includes the pam_ldap module for
authenticating a user with an LDAP database.
Pam_ldap versions prior to 144 have a string format
bug in the logging mechanism. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Remotely exploitable vulnerability in pine
| Package(s): | pine |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0014
|
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | November 27, 2002 |
| Description: |
Pine has an
unpleasant
vulnerability in URL handling vulnerability which can lead to
command execution by remote attackers.
(First LWN report: January 17th).
This vulnerability is remotely exploitable; updating is a good idea.
Note: If an update isn't yet available for your distribution,
setting enable-msg-view-urls to "off" in pine's setup will
avoid the vulnerability. (Thanks to Greg Herlein).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Sharutils potential privilege escalation using uudecode
| Package(s): | sharutils |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0178
|
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | October 30, 2002 |
| Description: |
According to the CVE entry,
"uudecode, as available in the sharutils package before 4.2.1, does not
check whether the filename of the uudecoded file is a pipe or symbolic
link, which could allow attackers to overwrite files or execute commands."
(First LWN
report: May 16).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Multiple vulnerabilities fixed in Squid-2.4.STABLE7
| Package(s): | squid |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | July 8, 2002 |
Updated: | November 15, 2002 |
| Description: |
Here is the security advisory for the Squid proxy server reporting several vulnerabilities in versions up to and including 2.4.STABLE7.
Several of the bugs are believed to allow remote code execution.
The security advisory lists the following
changes:
- Several bugfixes and cleanup of the Gopher client, both
to correct some security issues and to make Squid properly
render certain Gopher menus.
- Security fixes in how Squid parses FTP directory listings into
HTML
- FTP data channels are now sanity checked to match the address
of the requested FTP server. This to prevent theft or injection
of data. See the new ftp_sanitycheck directive if this sanity
check is not desired.
- The MSNT auth helper has been updated to v2.0.3+fixes for
buffer overflow security issues found in this helper.
- A security issue in how Squid forwards proxy authentication
credentials has been fixed
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Malformed NFS packet buffer overflow vulnerability in tcpdump
| Package(s): | tcpdump |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0380
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | October 9, 2002 |
| Description: |
A buffer overflow in tcpdump can be triggered by a bad NFS packet when
tracing the network. Unmodified tcpdump versions 3.6.2 and earlier are vulnerable.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability
| Package(s): | telnet Telnet netkit-telnet-ssl kerberos telnetd netkit-telnet nkitb/nkitserv/telnetd krb5 |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | October 5, 2004 |
| Description: |
This vulnerability,
originally thought to be confined to BSD-derived systems, was first covered
in the July 26th Security
Summary. It is now known that Linux telnet daemons are vulnerable as
well.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Multiple vulnerabilities in SNMP implementations
| Package(s): | ucdsnmp ucd-snmp |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0012
CAN-2002-0013
|
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | September 17, 2002 |
| Description: |
Most SNMP
implementations out there have a variety of buffer overflow vulnerabilities
and should be upgraded at first opportunity. See this CERT advisory for more. (First
LWN report: February 14).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
webalizer: reverse DNS buffer overflow vulnerability
| Package(s): | webalizer |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | January 27, 2003 |
| Description: |
The cause is a buffer overflow bug.
This one sounds nasty.
If reverse DNS lookups are enabled in webalizer,
"an attacker with control over the victims DNS may spoof responses thus
triggering a buffer overflow, potentially leading to a root compromise."
Webalizer 2.01-10 "fixes this and a few
other buglets that have been discovered in the last month or so".
(First LWN report: April 18th, 2002).
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Webmin/Usermin vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | webmin |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | January 10, 2003 |
| Description: |
Webmin is a web-based interface for
system administration for Unix.
Webmin has cross-site scripting and
session ID spoofing vulnerabilities
which are fixed in the May 6, 2002 release of version 0.970.
(First LWN
report: May 9).
This one is scary. The session ID
spoofing vulnerability allows the "possibility that arbitrary
commands may be executed with root privileges."
Upgrading is strongly recommended. At a minimum avoid the
"preconditions for a successful exploit" by disabling
password timeouts under Webmin->Configuration->Authentication.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
Problems with libgtop_daemon
| Package(s): | wuftpd libgtop |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | May 20, 2002 |
Updated: | May 7, 2003 |
| Description: |
The libgtop_daemon package is a GNOME
program which makes system information available remotely.
LWN reported the remotely exploitable format
string and buffer overflow vulnerabilities in that package
on December 6th.
On November 28th
disabling the libgtop_daemon on systems where it is running until
an update is available.
Many Linux systems do not run
libgtop by default, but applying the update is a good idea anyway.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (1 posted)
xchat IC server based dns query vulnerability
| Package(s): | xchat |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2002-0382
|
| Created: | June 5, 2002 |
Updated: | September 24, 2002 |
| Description: |
A malicious IRC server may
return a response to a /dns query that executes arbitrary commands
with the privileges of the user running XChat.
Versions of XChat prior to 1.8.9 are vulnerable. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Resources
Linux Security Week and Advisory Watch
The
July 29nd Linux Security Week and
July 26th Linux Advisory Watch newsletters
from LinuxSecurity.com are available.
Comments (none posted)
LinuxSecurity Magazine Online - First Edition
Readers fluent in Portuguese are encouraged to check out the
first issue of Linux Security Magazine from the Brazilian free project
LinuxSecurity Brasil.
Full Story (comments: none)
Testing Safety-Critical Software with AdaTEST (Linux Journal)
The Linux Journal
looks at the
AdaTEST utility.
"
But how does Ada mix with Linux? In fact, it mixes quite well. The GNU Ada tool
chain (GNAT) is an Ada front-end to gcc, tying Ada closely with the
operating system. With standard facilities to import C
functions, Ada allows for metal-near programming by importing any C
functions, including system calls if need be."
Comments (none posted)
Events
Upcoming Security Events
| Date | Event | Location |
| August 1, 2002 | Black Hat Briefings 2002 | (Caesars Palace Hotel and Resort)Las Vegas, NV, USA |
| August 2 - 4, 2002 | Defcon | (Alexis Park Hotel and Resort)Las Vegas, Nevada |
| August 5 - 9, 2002 | 11th USENIX Security Symposium | San Francisco, CA, USA |
| August 6 - 9, 2002 | CERT Conference 2002 | Omaha, Nebraska, USA |
| August 19 - 21, 2002 | Canadian Security & Intelligence Conference(CSICON) | (Hyatt Regency)Calgary, Alberta Canada |
| August 28 - 30, 2002 | Workshop on Information Security Applications(WISA 2002) | Jeju Island, Korea |
| September 19 - 20, 2002 | SEcurity of Communications on the Internet 2002(SECI'02) | Tunis, Tunisia |
| September 23 - 26, 2002 | New Security Paradigms Workshop 2002 | (The Chamberlain Hotel)Hampton, Virginia, USA |
| September 23 - 25, 2002 | University of Idaho Workshop on Computer Forensics | (University of Idaho)Moscow, Idaho, USA |
| September 26 - 27, 2002 | HiverCon 2002 | (Hilton Hotel)Dublin, Ireland |
| September 27 - 29, 2002 | ToorCon 2002 | (San Diego Concourse)San Diego, CA, USA |
For additional security-related events, included training courses (which we
don't list above) and events further in the future, check out
Security Focus' calendar,
one of the primary resources we use for building the above list. To
submit an event directly to us, please send a plain-text message to
lwn@lwn.net.
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Dennis Tenney
Kernel development
Release status
Current release status
The current development kernel is 2.5.29, which was
released on July 26. It includes another set
of IDE patches, a new LDM (Windows dynamic disks) driver, a number of
driverfs changes, lots of fixups for the new serial driver, and, of course,
lots of fixes for things that broke in the big 2.5.28 IRQ handling changes
(see
the July 25 LWN Kernel
Page). The
long format changelog is also available.
Linus's BitKeeper tree (for 2.5.30) contains quite a few patches at this
point. There is a change to the fork() code which allows things
to be done to the child process (i.e. migration to another CPU) before it
starts running. Also included is a big pile of IDE updates, more IRQ
fixes, some direct I/O changes from Andrew Morton ("This code is
wickedly quick"), the "strict overcommit" patch which prevents
surprise "out of memory" conditions, some serial driver fixes, and an ARM
update. This patch also removes the "khttpd" in-kernel web server.
There is no current prepatch from Dave Jones; this posting explains why. In short: he has
been busy, the current development kernels are too unstable to make patches
against, and he has been getting going with BitKeeper.
The current 2.5 status summary from Guillaume
Boissiere came out on July 31.
The current stable kernel is 2.4.18; Marcelo tried to catch us by
releasing the fourth 2.4.19 release candidate
just before this page went to "press," but we've learned to watch out for
that kind of manouver. -rc4 contains a relatively small set of fixes for
the few remaining problems that have come up; with luck, this one will turn
into the real 2.4.19.
The latest prepatch from Alan Cox is 2.4.19-rc3-ac5.
Comments (1 posted)
Kernel development news
The asynchronous I/O core
When Andrea Arcangeli released his
2.4.19-rc3-aa4 tree, he included
an old version of Ben LaHaise's asynchronous I/O code. This led to a
discussion of some features of the AIO interface, and
a note from Linus wondering what had happened to
the AIO project:
Note that something needs to get moving on this rsn, I'm not
interested in getting aio patches on Oct 30th. The feature freeze
may be on Halloween, but if I get some big feature just days before
I'm likely to just say "screw it".
Ben responded with a patch implementing the
core part of the AIO subsystem. It is far from a full implementation -
there are no device driver or filesystem changes in the patch. But it is
enough to get a sense for where the AIO development is going.
This patch does not, at this time, make all I/O asynchonous within the
kernel (as had been discussed at Kernel
Summit). Instead, devices and filesystems must implement the new
aio_read, aio_write, and aio_fsync operations in
the file_operations structure to be able to support asynchronous
operations. This patch can thus, at this point, go into the system without
actually breaking anything.
That may change when the rest of the AIO code is posted. This patch
provides the mechanism for submitting, tracking, and cancelling
asynchronous I/O operations - actually executing those operations
will come later. A new io_submit system call provides for the
initiation of asynchronous I/O requests; it takes an array of structures
describing what is to be done. Whenever an application wants to fire off
an asynchronous read or write, it fills in a iocb structure with
an "opcode," information on the buffer, etc. and passes it to
io_submit. (Of course, the application will likely call a library
function like aio_read which handles these details).
io_submit does some validation and bookkeeping, then passes the
requests on to the new file_operations methods. For now, they
disappear into a cloud of missing code for execution. When the operation
has completed, successfully or not, the internal function
aio_complete is called with the final status. That status (and
associated information) is stored in a circular buffer; applications can
extract this information from the buffer with the new io_getevents
system call.
Interestingly, some of the structure is there to allow this circular buffer
to be mapped into user space. Then applications could obtain their I/O
completion information without the need for a system call. The
implementation of this feature is not yet complete, however.
Much of the rest of the code posted at this point concerns itself with
cancellation of asynchronous I/O requests - either by application request,
or when the application exits.
What is missing is the implementation of the AIO operations
themselves. Previous versions of this patch provided generic versions of
the aio_read and aio_write operations that handled much
of the low-level work. They would start by calling the standard
read or write operations, but with a twist: those
operations were changed to take an extra flags argument. If
flags contains F_ATOMIC, the I/O operation must be
completed without sleeping, or not at all. In the first case, the
operation is done and the application can be notified.
Life is often not that easy, though - usually it is necessary to wait for
I/O operations. The application does not want to wait, of course, or it
would not be using asynchronous I/O. The older AIO patch would create a
kvec structure describing the operation - it contains a pointer to
the physical page holding the user buffer, a length, and an offset. Then
one of the new kvec_read or kvec_write operations would be called
to start the work. These operations also need to be atomic (no sleeping),
and must arrange to call aio_complete when the job is done.
This is the part of the patch which breaks everything, of course - even
devices and filesystems which have no intention of supporting asynchronous
I/O must take the new flags argument on read and
write. It will be interesting to see how this part of the AIO
patch has changed over the last few months. If the kernel is really going
to shift to asynchronous operations as the default way of doing things
internally, there could be some fun surprises there.
Comments (none posted)
Organizing the kernel binary interface
The interface between the kernel and user space is a complicated thing.
There are over 200 system calls, many of which take task-specific
structures or other types as arguments. And then there is
ioctl,
which can be different for every driver or filesystem, and which, according
to many, should be seen as hundreds of independent system calls in its own
right.
In the good old days, before glibc, applications included kernel header
files directly to get the definitions of the structures needed for system
calls. The good old days were not all that good, though; keeping the
kernel header files suitable for user space use was not easy, the kernel
headers brought in a lot of stuff that applications did not need, and it
was not uncommon to encounter mismatches between the headers used to
compile an application and the actual kernel it was running under. As a
result, the rule with glibc has been to never, ever include kernel header
files into application programs.
The problem with this approach is that there is no longer a single
definition of the interface between kernel and user space. People working
on library interfaces must go hunting for structure definitions through the
tangled mess of kernel header files; that is not an easy job.
H. Peter Anvin, as it turns out, is working on a
library interface - a small C library for the initramfs mechanism. He
has come up with a relatively simple suggestion: create a new include
directory (linux/abi/) for include files which encapsulate the
interface between the two worlds. These files would be written so that
they could be included in either kernel or user space, and they would
contain only the minimal declarations needed to define the kernel
interface.
The idea makes a lot of sense. It would make life easier for library
writers, but it would help on the kernel side as well. It is not always
obvious, when editing kernel headers, that a particular structure forms
part of the interface with user space. Putting the user space interface
into special header files will make it harder to change that interface by
mistake. Creating the abi/ directory seems like a logical part of
the larger task of cleaning up the kernel's include files.
Comments (2 posted)
Patches and updates
Kernel trees
- Andrea Arcangeli: 2.4.19rc3aa4. "<span>Merged async-io from Benjamin LaHaise after purifying it from the
/proc/libredhat.so mess that made it not binary compatible with 2.5.</span>"
(July 30, 2002)
Core kernel code
- Benjamin LaHaise: aio-core for 2.5.29 . "<span>This drop is untested, but I'd
like it if people could provide comments on it.</span>"
(July 30, 2002)
Development tools
Device drivers
- Marcin Dalecki: IDE 104.
(July 26, 2002)
- Marcin Dalecki: IDE 105.
(July 30, 2002)
- Marcin Dalecki: IDE 106.
(July 26, 2002)
- Marcin Dalecki: IDE 107.
(July 26, 2002)
- Russell King: Various updates. (...to the new serial driver...)
(July 26, 2002)
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Networking
Architecture-specific
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Distributions
News and Editorials
Distribution news for August 1, 2002
This has been a relatively slow week for distribution news. Several of
the major vendors have released new versions recently, and while
development has started on several new branches, these are too new to
have much to report. The new Debian installer that will be used in
"sarge" is a worth a look. You'll find more information in the Debian
Weekly News.
The minor distributions have been more active. There are a number of new
releases including ClarkConnect, DemoLinux and Lycoris. There should be
something there for everyone, whether you want to run Linux from a CD
while at the (non-Linux) office, or want an easy desktop system for
Grandma, or you are power-user and want to install everything from
source. If your dream Linux system isn't mentioned on this list, then
it's in the LWN
Distributions list. We have some plans to improve that as well, so
stay tuned, and hopefully we'll be back in two weeks.
Comments (none posted)
Distribution News
Debian Weekly News - July 30th, 2002
The Debian Weekly News #29 is now available. Topics this week include
funding free software development and free software job opportunities in
the UK.
Full Story (comments: none)
Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter
The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for July 25 is out. It looks at
the first Mandrake Linux 9.0 beta, the latest financial results, and more.
Full Story (comments: none)
NetBSD
NetBSD has released
v1.5.3 with minor
security fixes.
Comments (none posted)
Red Hat Bug Fix advisory for GCC 2.96-RH
Red Hat has an updated version of GCC 2.96-RH available for RH 7.2 and 7.3,
addressing various issues filed in bug reports.
Full Story (comments: 1)
Yellow Dog Linux Bug fix Advisory for qt
Yellow Dog has updated qt packages are available. "
The version of
the Qt tookit that shipped with Yellow Dog Linux 2.3 contains a small bug
which causes the startup time of KDE applications such as Konqueror to be
quite slow. The bug also caused general UI slowness in applications such
as KMail and broken preview functionality in the KDE Control Center's
screensaver module. Installing the updated Qt packages resolves all of
these above problems."
Full Story (comments: none)
UnitedLinux Clan To Detail Unified ISV, Channel, Customer Programs At
LinuxWorld (CRN)
Here's a CRN
article
about UnitedLinux. "
At LinuxWorld from Aug. 12-15, UnitedLinux--a
consortium formed in May by four leading Linux distributors--will
demonstrate an alpha version of its uniform UnitedLinux distribution and
detail new programs, said Ransom Love, the former president and CEO of
Caldera, who became head of Caldera's UnitedLinux operation in
June."
Comments (none posted)
Minor distribution updates
2-Disk Xwindow System
The
2-Disk
Xwindow System has released
v1.4rc078 with some code
cleanup.
Comments (none posted)
ClarkConnect
ClarkConnect has released
verion 1.1. The software now comes in two versions:
- The Standard version is free, no support included
- The Office version includes 30-day install support, along with VPN,
wireless, antivirus trialware, content filtering and a few extra
features.
Full Story (comments: none)
DemoLinux 3.01pl5 available for download
DemoLinux has released version
3.01p15. "
This is the latest (and probably last) version in the 3.0x
series of DemoLinux, and surely the last using the old but stable 2.2.18
kernel."
Full Story (comments: none)
KNOPPIX
KNOPPIX has released
version 3.0 with major
feature enhancements. The
KNOPPIX website
also announces the release of version 3.1, a Debian-based CD featuring
Linux-Kernel 2.4.x, KDE V3.0.2, OpenOffice, and much more
Comments (none posted)
Lycoris Releases Much Anticipated Desktop/LX Update 2
Lycoris has released Desktop/LX Update 2, featuring a new Internet
installer, Iris, to browse and install Desktop/LX programs from the
Software Gallery.
Full Story (comments: none)
Lycoris Desktop/LX
PCLinuxOnline
reports that the
Lycoris
release of Desktop/LX Update 2 Build 46 has gone gold.
Comments (none posted)
MicroBSD
MicroBSD has released
v0.5 with major feature
enhancements.
Comments (none posted)
Server optimized Linux
Server optimized Linux (SoL) has
released
v15.00 with
major feature enhancements.
Comments (none posted)
VectorLinux
VectorLinux has an iso
image of a new beta, named SOHO. See the
announcement on TuxReports.
Comments (none posted)
Webfish Linux (firewall-1)
Webfish Linux has
released
version 1.1
of its new firewall-1 branch.
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Development
Thanks!
With the future of LWN being highly uncertain at this point,
I'd like to take the opportunity to say thanks to all of
the LWN readers, people who have submitted material to us,
and those who were kind enough to shower us with praise
and donations over the years. It certainly has been an
interesting and educational journey. Hopefully our efforts have
helped to move Linux and open-source software forward.
This grand experiment is a long way from being over.
Meanwhile, I will personally continue to ponder the discorporate
similarities between open-source software, solar and wind energy,
homebrew beer brewing, non-commercial music, concert tape trading, and
micropower radio. Open-source software will no doubt play a big roll
in my future endeavors.
So long and thanks for all of the fiche. (and other forms of media)
-- Forrest Cook
Comments (none posted)
Valgrind memory debugger 1.0.0
Developer Julian Seward has released version 1.0.0 of the
Valgrind
memory debugger for x86-GNU/Linux with the following inspirational
note:
Programmers! Make your software Valgrind-clean. Test it with Valgrind and
fix all problems Valgrind reports. This will give you some assurance that
your code is free of a broad class of memory management errors. You may
well find undiscovered bugs, and your code will probably be more stable as
a result. It's good for your code, good for you and especially it's good
for the people who use your code.
By intercepting a number of memory related system calls,
Valgrind can detect the following problems:
- The use of uninitialised memory.
- Reading and writing of freed memory after it has been free'd
- Reading and writing past the end of malloced memory.
- Reading and writing of inappropriate areas on the stack.
- Memory leaks involving lost pointers to malloced blocks.
- The passing of uninitialized and/or unaddressible memory to system calls.
- The mismatched use of malloc/new/new and free/delete/delete.
- Some possible misuses of the POSIX pthreads API.
Valgrind is supposed to be able to check
any dynamically-linked ELF x86 executable, without modification or recompilation, and it can fire up GDB when errors are encountered.
Valgrind also has built-in cache profiling, which can be useful
for enhancing the performance of code.
The current 1.0.0 release has undergone a feature-freeze testing phase
and it is considered to be stable code at this point. It has
successfully been
used to check a number of large applications such as
KDE3, Mozilla, OpenOffice, and MySQL, to name a few applications.
See the
Valgrind user manual for the full documentation.
Valgrind has been released under the GPL license.
Comments (3 posted)
System Applications
Electronics
Icarus Verilog snapshot 20020728
A new snapshot of the Icarus Verilog electronic simulation language
compiler
has been announced.
The release notes are not yet available.
Comments (none posted)
Web Site Development
Zope Members' News
The latest
Zope Members' News
items include announcements for ZWeatherApplet v1.0,
the Zediscuss product, ZopeTestCase 0.5.0, SlideShow V0.1,
My Zope 0.1, the new TriZPUG: North Carolina Zope/Python user group,
and Interbase / Firebird Database Adapters.
Comments (none posted)
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 4 (O'Reilly)
Stas Bekman
gives some tips on the use of shared memory to improve the performance of
mod_perl.
"
If your OS supports sharing of memory (and most sane systems do), you might save a lot of RAM by sharing it between child processe