Brief items
A "honeypot" is a digital system whose purpose is to attract and identify
illegal activity. Traditionally, honeypots are sacrificial computers
placed on a network. The honeypot system serves no useful purpose; no
legitimate user will have any reason to access it. As a result, any
accesses which actually happen are likely to be somebody attempting
something nasty. The honeypot can thus serve as a sort of early warning
system, as well as a laboratory in which cracker techniques can be studied
in real time.
A new paper by Lance
Spitzner points out that the honeypot concept can be applied in other
contexts. One such application is "honeytokens," a bit of information
which should never be accessed. An example might be login information
placed in a message in a senior manager's mail spool; anybody attempting to
actually log in using that information is almost guaranteed to be an
attacker. A properly setup system could initiate a trace and catch the
attacker before he gets into something truly useful.
This idea is not particularly new; direct (physical) mail companies have
long embedded special addresses in their lists to track the use of those
lists, for example. The security community has not, until now, made much
use of this technique, however. Properly used, honeytokens could become a
valuable part of intrusion detection and other security-related systems.
Stolen information may not bite, but it may yet manage to strike back at
thieves anyway.
Comments (7 posted)
New vulnerabilities
2.4 kernel - several vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | 2.4 kernel |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2003-0461
CAN-2003-0462
CAN-2003-0464
CAN-2003-0476
CAN-2003-0501
CAN-2003-0550
CAN-2003-0551
CAN-2003-0552
|
| Created: | July 21, 2003 |
Updated: | December 24, 2003 |
| Description: |
Several security issues have been discovered affecting the Linux kernel:
-
CAN-2003-0461: /proc/tty/driver/serial reveals the exact character
counts for serial links. This could be used by a local attacker to infer
password lengths and inter-keystroke timings during password entry.
-
CAN-2003-0462: Paul Starzetz discovered a file read race condition
existing in the execve() system call, which could cause a local crash.
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CAN-2003-0464: A recent change in the RPC code set the reuse flag on
newly-created sockets. Olaf Kirch noticed that his could allow normal
users to bind to UDP ports used for services such as nfsd.
-
CAN-2003-0476: The execve system call in Linux 2.4.x records the file
descriptor of the executable process in the file table of the calling
process, allowing local users to gain read access to restricted file
descriptors.
-
CAN-2003-0501: The /proc filesystem in Linux allows local users to
obtain sensitive information by opening various entries in /proc/self
before executing a setuid program. This causes the program to fail to
change the ownership and permissions of already opened entries.
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CAN-2003-0550: The STP protocol is known to have no security, which
could allow attackers to alter the bridge topology. STP is now turned
off by default.
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CAN-2003-0551: STP input processing was lax in its length checking,
which could lead to a denial of service.
-
CAN-2003-0552: Jerry Kreuscher discovered that the Forwarding table
could be spoofed by sending forged packets with bogus source addresses
the same as the local host.
|
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
fdclone: insecure temporary directory
| Package(s): | fdclone |
CVE #(s): | CAN-2003-0596
|
| Created: | July 23, 2003 |
Updated: | October 1, 2003 |
| Description: |
fdclone creates a temporary directory in /tmp as a workspace.
However, if this directory already exists, the existing directory is
used instead, regardless of its ownership or permissions. This would
allow an attacker to gain access to fdclone's temporary files and
their contents, or replace them with other files under the attacker's
control.
CAN-2003-0596 |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
gnupg: gpg setgid
| Package(s): | gnupg |
CVE #(s): | |
| Created: | July 21, 2003 |
Updated: | July 23, 2003 |
| Description: |
gpg needs to be setuid to make use of protected memory space, however the
setgid bit allowed the gpg user to overwrite files owned by the group
root. |
| Alerts: |
|
Comments (none posted)
Resources
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
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