Posted on 11/28/2001 1:28:10 PM PST by Don Joe
A vulnerability in the most widely used FTP server program for Linux has left numerous sites open to online attackers, a situation worsened when Red Hat mistakenly released information on the flaw early, leaving other Linux companies scrambling to get a fix out.
"Other vendors didn't have a patch," said Alfred Huger, vice president of engineering for network security information provider SecurityFocus. The company has been working with vendors to fix the vulnerability after computer security company Core Security Technologies alerted them to the problem Nov. 14.
"The fix is not rocket science," Huger said. "But we weren't working at a breakneck pace to get a patch out, because everyone was working together."
The software flaw affects all versions of wu-FTP, a program originally created at Washington University at St. Louis for servers running FTP (file transfer protocol) functions for transferring files over the Internet.
While the exact number of active FTP servers on the Internet is not known, the software is the most commonly installed file server and accompanies most major Linux distributions, including those from Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera International, Turbolinux, Connectiva, Cobalt Networks, MandrakeSoft and Wirex.
The problem, known in security circles as the wu-FTP Globbing Heap Corruption Vulnerability, allows attackers to get remote access to all files on a server, provided they can access the FTP service. Since most such servers provide anonymous access to anyone on the Internet, a great number will be vulnerable.
Huger called the flaw "serious."
The impact of the software vulnerability was exacerbated because many Linux software companies were caught flat-footed by a surprise early release of information regarding the vulnerability.
While the group that discovered the flaw, Core ST, informed Linux software companies and the open-source group that manages development for wu-FTP of the flaw, Red Hat mistakenly released a security advisory to its customers on Tuesday.
Normally, an advisory is a good thing, but other Linux software sellers had expected any advisories to be published Dec. 3, giving them time to work on fixes. Instead, the surprise announcement left the customers of other companies' products vulnerable.
"We were releasing some advisories on the same day, and an overzealous administrator pushed this out as well," said Mark Cox, senior engineering director for Red Hat. The company is adding new safeguards to its publishing system to avoid similar problems in the future, he said.
"We put a stop to this," Cox said. "This will not happen again. It was a bad mistake."
Don't forget Outlook.
The funny thing is that if the MS bashers got their way and had MS split up, they wouldn't be able to claim that the Windows OS had flaws.
Nimda is a very nasty virus that sends out tons of attack attempts. That is why you see so many of them.
That's exactly right. Buffer overflows are a problem on any platform that doesn't have some kind of hardware stack protection built in to the CPU. Neither Unix nor Windows is free from security problems, generally speaking.
No bashing on this but a serious question: If wu-ftpd is open source why wasn't the bug discovered earlier? Or is it a commericial product?
Man, you sound bitter. What's your problem?
This has been my point all along. I am not a Windows zealot, but I truely detest the Unix/Linux/Solaris/etc crowd that believes that their OS is the best thing since sliced bread and NEVER has problems like Windows.
Glad we agree on this.
sh-2.05a# grep root.exe access_log|awk {'print $1'}|uniq|wc -l
40
40 different machines with root.exe alone.
Hey, you violated your own rule about not feeding the trolls! :-)
I think this one was too good to pass up.
Still a lot.
Which proves my point. Roughly 13 servers a day (ok, technically I said less than a dozen but pretty close).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.