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| LinuxSecurity.com Linux Advisory Watch |
| November 21st, 2003 Volume 4, Number 46a |
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Editors: Dave Wreski Benjamin Thomas
dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Linux Advisory Watch is a comprehensive newsletter that outlines the
security vulnerabilities that have been announced throughout the week.
It includes pointers to updated packages and descriptions of each
vulnerability.
This week, advisories were released for zebra, hylafax, minimalist, Glibc,
XFree86, Sane, postgresql, and apache. The distributors include
Conectiva, Debian, Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE, and Trustix.
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One of the more powerful and cutting edge technologies in security today
is honeypots. Those who have a need for better network monitoring and
increased intrusion detection capabilities should find value in their
usage. The concept of honeypots has been around for many years, but until
recently they haven't had much widespread use. More recently, research
has been done to precisely define what honeypots are, and the development
of honeypot type classification. With community involvement, Lance
Spitzner uses the following definition to define honeypots: "A honeypot is
an information system resource whose value lies in unauthorized or illicit
use of that resource."
To the average IT person, honeypots may be somewhat confusing. How could
any system value from 'unauthorized or illicit' use? Isn't it the
responsibility of security professionals to ensure that there is no
wrongful use to IT systems? I don't think this analogy is completely
appropriate, but a honeypot is similar to a police sting operation. The
name honeypot almost implies that the IT resource is 'bait' to lure
unauthorized users. While this could be true, I'm not sure that it is the
best way to think about honeypots. Lance's definition contains the word
value. What value is there in setting up an easy target to lure
unauthorized user? That's almost like buying a car and always leaving it
unlocked with the keys in it, parking it by your normal car, hoping
someone will steal your 'honeycar' rather than the car that you use
everyday. In my opinion, that is a very expensive protection system.
A better approach is to have specific goals in mind when implementing
honeypots. Are you going to use this as research, simply to gain
knowledge to help you better protect against the enemy, or are you a
corporate user who wants to use a honeypot as a supplement to your
intrusion detection system? Often, corporate IDS' have so many alerts, it
is nearly impossible to sort out real events. Honeypots provide an
excellent method of identifying unauthorized traffic and activity, simply
because any traffic hitting a honeypot is by default unauthorized.
Honeypots have many uses and should not be installed just for the 'cool'
factor. If one is mis-configured and sitting on your network, it is
potentially a huge security threat.
To find out more, I suggest the Honeynet project:
http://www.honeynet.org/
Until next time, cheers!
Benjamin D. Thomas
ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
---
OpenVPN: An Introduction and Interview with Founder, James Yonan In this
article, Duane Dunston gives a brief introduction to OpenVPN and
interviews its founder James Yonan.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/feature_stories/feature_story-152.html
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| Distribution: Conectiva | ----------------------------//
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11/20/2003 - zebra
Denial of service vulnerabilities
Multiple denial of service vulnerabilities have been resolved.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/connectiva_advisory-3801.html
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| Distribution: Debian | ----------------------------//
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11/17/2003 - hylafax
Multiple format string vulnerabilities
The SuSE Security Team discovered several exploitable formats string
vulnerabilities in hylafax, a flexible client/server fax system, which
could lead to executing arbitrary code as root on the fax server.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/debian_advisory-3793.html
11/17/2003 - minimalist
Unsanitized input vulnerability
A security-related problem has been discovered in minimalist, a mailing
list manager, which allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary
commands.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/debian_advisory-3794.html
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| Distribution: Mandrake | ----------------------------//
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11/19/2003 - Glibc
Buffer overflow vulnerability
A bug was discovered in the getgrouplist function in glibc that can
cause a buffer overflow if the size of the group list is too small to
hold all the user's groups. This overflow can cause segementation
faults in various user applications, some of which may lead to
additional security problems.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/mandrake_advisory-3800.html
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| Distribution: Red Hat | ----------------------------//
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11/20/2003 - XFree86
Multiple integer overflows
Updated XFree86 packages for Red Hat Linux 9 provide security fixes to
font libraries and XDM.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/redhat_advisory-3802.html
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| Distribution: SuSE | ----------------------------//
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11/18/2003 - Sane
Denial of service vulnerability
Several bugs in sane were fixed to avoid remote denial-of-service
attacks. These attacks can even be executed if the remote attacker is
not allowed to access the sane server by not listing the attackers IP
in the file sane.conf.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/suse_advisory-3799.html
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| Distribution: Trustix | ----------------------------//
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11/17/2003 - glibc
Buffer overflow vulnerability
The getgrouplist function in GNU libc allows may attackers to cause a
denial of service (segmentation fault) and execute arbitrary code when
a user is a member of a large number of groups, which can cause a
buffer overflow.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/tawie_advisory-3789.html
11/17/2003 - postgresql
Buffer overflow vulnerability
Buffer overflow in to_ascii for PostgreSQL 7.2.x, and 7.3.x before
7.3.4, allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/tawie_advisory-3790.html
11/17/2003 - apache
Multiple vulnerabilities
Multiple stack-based buffer overflows in mod_alias and mod_rewrite have
been fixed. Improper handling of CGI redirect paths has been fixed.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/tawie_advisory-3791.html
11/17/2003 - coreutils/fileutils/anonftp Integer overflow vulnerability
Multiple vulnerabilities
An integer overflow in ls in the fileutils or coreutils packages may
allow local users to cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary
code via a large -w value, which could be remotely exploited via
applications that use ls, such as wu-ftpd.
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/tawie_advisory-3792.html
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