Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 02 Dec 1999 15:19:44 +0000
From:      Adam Laurie <adam@algroup.co.uk>
To:        Steve Reid <sreid@sea-to-sky.net>
Cc:        Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>, Bill Swingle <unfurl@dub.net>, security@FreeBSD.ORG, Jordan Hubbard <jkh@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: [btellier@USA.NET: Several FreeBSD-3.3 vulnerabilities]
Message-ID:  <38468E10.2E3B3338@algroup.co.uk>
References:  <19991201093242.A71817@dub.net> <64661.944125995@axl.noc.iafrica.com> <19991202032121.A7470@grok.localnet>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Steve Reid wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 11:13:15AM +0200, Sheldon Hearn wrote:
> > query-pr: no PRs matched
> > Looks to me like this chap's full of hot air.  I'm not saying the
> > problems don't exist, but this guy doesn't seem to have done much to
> > contact us, eh?
> 
> It may be that he contacted the port maintainer and/or security-officer
> through email rather than using the PR system.
> 
> As long as we're on the subject I may as well relay my own experience...
> 
> Some time ago I found a root exploit in a third-party package installed
> via ports. I wasn't sure if it was freebsd-specific so I emailed the
> port maintainer and the people originally responsible for the software.

I can also say that I've not had a great response from the security team
on what I consider to be a serious issue... The only reason I also
haven't (yet) butraq'd it, is because I haven't had time to bring a
machine up to date to see if the fix was committed without a solution
actually being agreed on the list...

My specific experience was that I found a hole in the default
rc.firewall rules. This hole means that UDP is totally unprotected
because of faulty rules for DNS and NTP. I posted a suggested fix to the
security-officer, and got an immediate reply saying "I agree 100%". The
security-officer is clearly also a list, because I then got another
reply from someone else, telling me how to configure my DNS. This
degenerated into a thread related to DNS server configuration and
entirely missing the point regarding ipfw. I then suggested moving it to
the wider forum of this list, and guess what...? The same thing
happened! The thread diappeared in a cloud of irrelevant discussion
about how to set up name servers. As I say, I'm currently unaware of the
status of rc.firewall, but when I get around to checking it, if it
hasn't been fixed, you'll be reading about yourselves on bugtraq again!
If it has been fixed, then excellent, well done, etc. etc. :)

For a bit of context and to save you trawling, here's the juicy bit:

> And for those that don't think this is a serious issue...
> 
> Get a copy of netcat. Make sure syslogd is running in default mode (i.e.
> without "-s" option) on the target "firewalled" server. Run the
> following command on a machine outside the firewall:
> 
>   nc -u -p 53 -n [firewalled-server-ip] 514
> 
> and type some text in. Now go and tail /var/log/messages on the target
> server, and you'll see the text that has just walked through your
> firewall. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to exploit an NFS
> mount in a similar fashion...

cheers,
Adam
--
Adam Laurie                   Tel: +44 (181) 742 0755
A.L. Digital Ltd.             Fax: +44 (181) 742 5995
Voysey House                  
Barley Mow Passage            http://www.aldigital.co.uk
London W4 4GB                 mailto:adam@algroup.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM                PGP key on keyservers


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?38468E10.2E3B3338>