More Info on Debian.org Security Breach 545
mbanck writes "James Troup (part of the Debian System administration team) has published more information on the recent compromise of four debian.org machines. The attack vector seemed to be a sniffed password of an unprivileged account, from which the attacker somehow managed to gain root and install the suckit rootkit and crack the other machines. As the machines were fairly uptodate with respect to security, an as-of-yet unknown local root exploit might be in the wild, so keep an eye on your boxen.Note that the main ftp archive running on a sparc machine was not compromised, so the exploit might not yet be ported to non-i386 architectures."
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Boxen.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So much for unbiased Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, what I see is people warning of a possible security hole in the wild.
You never see that level of rational explanation when it comes to a user-transmitted e-mail Outlook worm. In fact, in those cases it magically becomes a "Microsoft hole," even though it's users running the executable!
This is because one of the "strong" points which is claimed by windows is that it's designed to be used by non-tech experts, while at the same time it offers NO protection from mistakes. If outlook were modified so that it cannot execute anything and you must manually save to disk and execute whatever you would see (beside a drop in virus infections) fingers pointed at the users instead of Microsoft.
Re:So much for unbiased Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So much for unbiased Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
You're saying slashdot posters are inconsistant, but they're just different people who all happen to read slashdot. If you want to make a real argument, pick one person and attack their inconsistancies.
Another example is the political parties. You can't say that Democrats are inconsistant because of this, that, and the other. Democrats are a varied group, and they have many different perspectives and form their arguments in different, often contradictary ways. They just see a common means to their end, and each individual may be 100% consistant. (note: I'm not a democrat, I just used them as an example. This works with any political party that I can think of.)
Ultimately what you're doing is grouping variety of people together (slashdot readers) and then attacking the group as a whole for being inconsistant with respect to a separate issue (their perspectives about computer security).
You can do that to anyone. For example: "Blondes are so inconsistant. First they complain that the environment is being damaged, then the next week they're complaining about too much government regulation." Well, being blonde obviously has nothing to do with the topic, so of course you find inconsistancies in their viewpoint.
That type of reasoning is very simple-minded. The world is a complicated place with myriad possible groupings of people. Analogies that relate nations, corporations, SIGs, etc. to people often confuse the issue beyond repair. Microsoft isn't a "bully," it's just that the shareholders elect people that are likely to use aggressive business tactics and leverage the monopoly that they have to gain shareholder value. You can't punish MS in any way analogous to punishing a bully, because the shareholders could be long gone by now (however many years it takes to settle an antitrust lawsuit), because it's simply not a person, it's a group. Same with nations, it's a group and should not be personified. Think how much time the media has wasted talking about Bush as though he "doesn't play well with others." Nations are groups, not people.
Re:So much for unbiased Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
First, we aren't talking about a desktop system getting hacked, we are talking about a server getting hacked. Secondly, a hack is a hack. If people at Debian let this slip, then it's their fault in the end. Whether it was MS or Debian, it would be the same thing: they screwed up.
Secondly, Debian doesn't develop all the software they distribute, or even use. Microsoft, however, develo
Re:Boxen.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Boxen.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Boxen.. (Score:3, Funny)
Another of my favorites:
"I before E except after C
and when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh
or on weekends or holidays or all throughout May
and you'll always be wrong no matter what you say!"
He's a very funny comic. There's a fan site that's worth checking out too. [brian-regan.com]
Re:Boxen.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Boxen.. (Score:3, Funny)
Two useful utilities to flush out the rootkits (Score:5, Informative)
Here are two useful utilities to flush out the SucKIT rootkit:
Kernel Security Therapy Anti-Trolls [freshmeat.net]
and
Kernel Security Checker [freshmeat.net]
Have a nice day !
Re:Boxen.. (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Boxen.. (Score:3, Funny)
and now that i'm on a "roll" - why the hell aren't the santa cruz organization and stanford university networks actually in santa cruz or stanford university? at least ibm is international...
Re:Brian Regan (Score:3, Funny)
Human Error (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Funny)
Repeat after me: The best password is the one that isn't stikie'd to the monitor and/or keyboard.
Re: Human Error (Score:5, Insightful)
> Random passphrase? Repeat after me: The best password is the one that isn't stikie'd to the monitor and/or keyboard.
When it comes to internet-based attacks, my yellow stickies are the securest files on my system!
Re: Human Error (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you'd want to make sure they weren't stuck somewhere visible to random passers-by.
But you always have to keep in mind that any form of security is only as strong as its user interface; if someone can access a password stickied to the bottom of your keyboard, they can probably attach a keylogger as well.
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Interesting)
Choose a quote or sentence, take the first (or second if you really want it to be hard) letter of each word, use numbers instead of letters for words like 'to', and alternate capitalization for the rest:
"To be or not to be, that is the question" becomes
"2bOn2BtItQ" which should defeat any dictionary based attacks, and is incredibly easy to remember. Of course I also choose somewhat more obscure quotes or make up an interesting sentence.
-Chris
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Human Error (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Human Error (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Human Error (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not to say that RSA or some similar system won't be part of a good solution... but there definitely needs to be some other component. (For example, the private key might be encrypted by a biometric signature or keycard or similar. While that still leaves the system vulnerable to physical attacks, it more or less eliminates network-based ones as long as you use secure protocols.)
Re:Human Error (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, you've achieved nothing. The issue here is the protocols, NOT passwords. Since these are not unnder the control of users, we should assume that any netwroked resource is insecure by design.
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Re:Human Error (Score:5, Insightful)
(For example, the private key might be encrypted by a biometric signature or keycard or similar.
I have yet to see a biometric signature that would solve this problem. Generally speaking, in biometric identification, information about the fingerprint/retina is stored on the disk and then compared against the data that is read in. The biometric information is not used *AS* the encryption key. So a biometric signature is just like a really big password, except that if someone cracks your password you can change it, but you can't (easily) change your fingerprints.
-a
Re:Human Error (Score:4, Interesting)
The biometric information is not used *AS* the encryption key.
And there's a good reason for that: It wouldn't work. Every time a biometric is scanned, the result is different. Biometric matching is hard because it's a process of evaluating the "closeness" of the livescan to the stored template and then deciding whether the two are close enough to be considered the same.
This means that trying to extract a set of bits from the scan which you could be sure would be the same every time is very difficult, and likely wouldn't net you many bits to use as a key. A set of bits that changes a little every time doesn't make a useful key.
Given some sort of a secure processor, you can store the key and the biometric template in there, and program it to refuse to use the key until it has been presented with a biometric scan which it considers to be close enough to the template. That gets you about half way to security, now you just need to find a way for the secure processor to verify that the livescan it receives is fresh, and not replayed. Oh, and it would be good if you could also be sure the livescan is a *live* scan. And don't forget to secure that template database well.
Making biometrics secure is hard. In practice, this means biometrics are only useful in two situations. The first is very low security, where the biometric is being used to raise the level of security from very, very low to very low. The second is very high security, where the biometric is to augment some other authentication methods, or when verification is only done in a very controlled environment, i.e. where you're watched closely by a human guard who knows how to ensure you're not trying to fool the scanner.
Re:biometrics (Score:5, Informative)
Palm scanning only proves you have the hand of someone allowed to access a system. Retina scanning only proves you have the eyeball of someone allowed to access a system.
Well, the manufacturers of palm/retina scanners generally do include a feature that detects if the bodypart being scanned has a pulse. So you can't fool these scanners just by cutting off someone's hand or ripping out their eyeball. (Although it might be possible to manufacture fake contact lenses or glue-on fingerprints that would work.)
On the other hand, the basic weakness is that the biometric signature is still just a big password. You can "sniff" the signature by installing a fake reader. You can steal the signature off the harddrive of the domain controller. You can bypass the reader by splicing the wire. And your "password" is the same for every site.
Bottom line: I would sooner trust a token card.
-a
Re:biometrics (Score:3, Informative)
One would hope so, but the evidence [schneier.com] isn't as promising.
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Interesting)
Er, the problem with biometric identification is that (1) its not testing who you are, just that the digital input matches some value and (2) you can't change what its testing.
You can't change who you are. Thus, once the key is compromised, it stays compromised.
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Interesting)
You pick a passphrase that you use for all of your systems. You then pick a unique seed for each system. Then, you do some quick mental math on it (pick an algo of your choice, just make it simple) and then you have the effective security of two passwords + unknown algorithm. It will make all of your passwords invulnerable to dictionary attacks (unless a rare circumstance has your resulting password being "password" or something)
For example, if you have a pass phrase of "MYBOXISSECURE" then you can use the box name as a seed, lets call the box "DEBIAN" and have the algorithm block the seed and then subtract, modulo 26.
MYBOXISSECURE
DEBIANDEBIAND
-------------
I'
Then reverse it or something. Walla! Pseudo-random passwords. Works great, and after a few times you will memorize the keystrokes and you won't need to do it by hand. You can even have a standard system for the passphrases amongst an entire group for the root password, so each system can have a different root password that everybody can just figure out as long as they know the passphrase. In addition, if you want to remove someone from the loop, just change the passphrases and redistribute to the trusted source.
It's a hack solution for the weak-password problem.
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Insightful)
In theory, a secured system can have this happen to it and the attacker will have fun deleting a single home directory before they run out of damage to do.
In practice, a single local privelage escalation attack is all it takes. Maybe this will end up being a good thing in the end, we get to find a previously unknown local root exploit, fix it and improve the Debian security practices, all in one move.
Re:Human Error (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. In the past, Windows exploits get found one of two ways. The first way is when a virus is found in the wild. The virus is deconstructed, then Microsoft does a cost analysis to determine if it's worth patching the vulnerability that enables the virus. If so, then a binary only patch will be issued. The first you'll hear of it is when you're able to download the patch. The second way is when a white hat hacker or security analysis team at some college find an exploit. If they go public with it, they're criticised for not giving time for Microsoft to develop a patch. If they go to Microsoft with it first, then the cost analysis process starts, only because the public at large doesn't know a problem exists, there's a much smaller chance a patch will be issued. In either case, the patch may or may not work, and it may or may not break your system. Caveat emptor.
When an exploit is found in Linux, it gets fixed. The cause of the exploit gets scrutinized world over, and other developers privately consider whether their software might have the capacity to be exploited in the same way.
Password was *sniffed* (Score:5, Informative)
This was both user and admin stupidity I guess. Admins who care about security shouldn't permit access through cleartext passwords and users shouldn't send their password in cleartext if they care about their account. Unfortunately many users don't know about this risk.
Re:Password was *sniffed* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Password was *sniffed* (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Password was *sniffed* (Score:2)
The state of the password being sent really isn't what's being discussed, since once the connection is unencrypted, it doesn't matter.
Re:Password was *sniffed* (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Password was *sniffed* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Human Error (Score:2, Funny)
> This incident reminds us of the importance of password security. It is sad to see one weak password responsible for such a breach.
I'm apologize - I never imagined that they would guess 'mydebian'.
Re: Human Error (Score:3, Funny)
Human Error or faulty security models? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that it's time for the big names like Debian, Slackware, Red Hat etc to start implementing it on their network connected machines. It's being incorporated into the stock kernel for a reason. Use it!
Re:Human Error or faulty security models? (Score:3, Informative)
The end result is: We will soon have a very strong security model built in to the standard stable kernel. The sad thing is that it will be off by default, and you will still need the set of userland tools that use it.
We have an excel
Unknown Debian exploit? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unknown Debian exploit? (Score:5, Funny)
hey it is pretty nice - i'm having a look around right now!
Re:Human Error (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Human Error (Score:3, Insightful)
We must find a systemic solution that includes
Um, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to shunt this off to a "weak password" all you want, but let's face facts here. A beloved Linux network was clobbered.
Yes, Virgina, Linux is not invincible. You have rootkits and exploits too. Just see Linuxsecurity [linuxsecurity.com] sometime.
And, yes, it makes all the Linux loonies who rail on about Microsoft insecurities look like religious hypocrites.
Karma Bonus unchecked, because I don't expect this to be well-received by biased moderators.
Re:Human Error (Score:3, Informative)
Eh? Why is everyone talking about a weak password?
The article says sniffed password.
I assume that they're not using cleartext password authentication which means that it wasn't sniffed on the wire, it's was sniffed on a (compromised) box the some user used to log in.
And if the clientbox is compromised it doesn't matter if you use password or a passphrased key.
Even keeping your key on something removable (like an USB keychain) doesn't h
In a nutshell - somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
"Somehow they got root on klecker and installed
suckit."
What follows is an interesting read - but the guts are in that 'somehow'.
Re:In a nutshell - somehow (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you can probably guess/crack/social engineer a password if you try hard enough. That's why security is about layers, compartmentalisation and multiple types of protection, not just a single password.
If this was your box, would you be more worried that someone had managed to sniff an (unprivileged) password? Or that any one of your users can now root your box? I know which one I would lose sleep over.
Here's to hoping that the root exploit is found and patched nice and quick. Even better if it something else that's been missed and is fixed in the latest patch.
Re:In a nutshell - somehow (Score:5, Interesting)
Uhm, did you read James' post? Here's a quote:
Surely this constitues something else than "overlooking" the root exploit? Deciding to keep the Debian accounts disables effectively stops the entire developement of Debian. Nobody has been able to upload packages in the last week, and lots of services are down.
James could have unlocked the accounts to make the developement pick up again rapidly (which would probably would be the only option in a corporate setting -- there's a release schedule that must be kept at all costs), but the admins are being thorough on this one.
In summary: James (and the other admins) are keeping the entire Debian Project in suspense for the purpose of tracking down this local root compromise and preventing it from being exploited again. You might want to think about that for a second, and see if "overlooking [the] unknown root exploit" is applicable here.
Re:In a nutshell - somehow (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet you may have overlooked detail: development has not stopped. People keep working on updated packages, they just cannot submit them. If the problem can be solved, the productivity lost won't be that great.
This is actually one of the great benefits that open source offers, at least for succesful OS projects. It is not just a benefit of the excellent project m
Re:In a nutshell - somehow (Score:3, Insightful)
Diebold, take note (Score:5, Insightful)
All vendors and site administrators should take note of the openness with which the problem was dealt.
When I go to buy a car, a computer, or a stereo, and the saleslizard is cagey about any problems that come up, my trust level goes down. If they tell me all about all the problems with the thing they're selling before I even notice them, my trust level goes up. It's like a cool drink on a hot summer day.
Contrasting with Debian, how long did it take to find out that Diebold ATMs had been hit by the Nachi worm?
I'm now more inclined to trust Debian, and less inclined to trust Diebold.
Re:Diebold, take note (Score:5, Insightful)
The attack vector seemed to be a sniffed password of an unprivileged account, from which the attacker somehow managed to gain root and install the suckit rootkit and crack the other machines. As the machines were fairly uptodate with respect to security, an as-of-yet unknown local root exploit might be in the wild, so keep an eye on your boxen.
I got the distinct impression that Slashdot is transformig into a FUD channel for unsuspecting readers.
The fact that a 'clean' Linux system can be backed up and restored from any media, is of more relevance and importance to users. EVERY system connected to the internet has potential unknown vulns, those running Windows are often unpatched and have no disaster control system as well.
Viewed from this perspective, I don't think we need to keep an eye on our boxen just the backup tapes / disks/ CDs.
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This attack has obviosly shocked the comunity. (Score:3, Insightful)
But this attack has a psicological impact. Debian itself has been attacked, and it seems to be a bug exploited just in part, on the other side, there are updates that the compromised machines never got aplied, and other big mistakes like a non-tared backup lying arround, with the original owner / permissions mask. This is really more that enough to get any netadmin running Debian to get paranoid.
One recommendation (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the first things that get wiped in an intrusion are the logs. All access logs should be copied in as near real-time as possible to a remote server that is not accessible from the machine being logged, i.e. a drop-box.
Re:One recommendation (Score:2)
Re:One recommendation (Score:3, Informative)
It looks like a bit of work to set up and administer but you'd think that an organization like Debian would make sure all their computers would be running it.
Re:One recommendation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One recommendation (Score:5, Interesting)
Try wiping logs printed out on a matrix printer...
Re:One recommendation (Score:4, Insightful)
Printing logs is a good idea in some circumstances; you will have a record of all actions and a remote intruder has no method of editing those logs. The main downside is the amount of paper it could use, plus it has to be kept supplied with paper & ink.
Re:One recommendation (Score:4, Funny)
Great (Score:3, Interesting)
I will check the md5sum.
Anyways Something to be said about passwords.. I am getting sick of passwords.. I have looked at the RSA keychains, But they cost too much.
So I ask are there any good one time password systems out there. That are opensource.. I have looked at going with smart cards but again with the money. (not to mention overkill for me)
I have found a few but none with a keychain.. I don't mind paying for a keychain, but I want the software to be opensource.
Re:Great (Score:4, Informative)
You could easily keep a pre-generated giant pad itself on a usb drive or something similar.
Root password (Score:5, Interesting)
Depending on the power of the box and the time from which the lower-level account was compromized, it could just be that a password-cracking procedure gained root access. Of course, it's also possible that the attacker managed to nab control of a process running as root, but again the initial compromise still required cracking a password to gain access to the machine.
First rule, secure your passwords... and it's probably not a bad idea to use a password cracklib to ensure that any semi-privileged (can SSH) users have somewhat secure passwords as well.
Re:Root password (Score:2)
Motto: don't [write|send|communicate] your passwords in plain text, ever! If you do, change it! (always change the password root gives you, which usu
Easy solution (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, and "password" is not really a "password".
#1 on Ten Immutable Laws of Security (Score:5, Insightful)
Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore.
Ammended for the rest of us: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:#1 on Ten Immutable Laws of Security (Score:2)
Two words: Outlook, IE.
Oh the irony.
Re:#1 on Ten Immutable Laws of Security (Score:5, Funny)
That's why I've been saying for years that all my computers are owned by Bill Gates.
Re:#1 on Ten Immutable Laws of Security (Score:5, Insightful)
Law #1 doesn't apply here. The intruder sniffed a password, and ran his own software. As far as I know, nobody was tricked into running malicious software. Law #1 should read, for real OS's
"Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your account, its not your account anymore."
The first failure, as per this list was Law #5 "Weak passwords trump strong security." Someone didn't properly protect their password, this gave the attacker their foot in the door.
The second failure was the unidentified privilege escalation. This doesn't appear to fit any of the laws (they appear to be written assuming privilege escallation is trivial, I guess that says something about Windows). Except perhaps, Law #10: "Technology is not a panacaea". Just because we run well designed software that has few security holes doesn't mean that we run perfectly designed software that has no security holes.
Occasionally something slips through the cracks, like here, and it's good to know that real people are paying real attention, and that there are effective ways of bringing necessary systems back up in a trusted fashion. Eventually, this escallation will be found, fixed, and machines patched.
A simple disaster-mgmnt starrtegy... (Score:3, Insightful)
99% of Slashdot readers, I believe, treat viruses, worms and other 'security' attacks as a NUISANCE rather than a PRIVACY hazard. A Service Pack or bug fix a week for Windows merely highlights the fact that data privacy on a 'personal' computer is a joke. The nuisance of reinstalling the Windows OS from CD, and reinstalling each and every app with the zillions of settings OR buying expensive, uunreliable 3rd party s/w for disaster recovery can be intolerable.
With Linux, OTOH, simple tools exist that can take backups of disk data (not disk images, just the files), AFTRER installing the apps. A simple restore of these files gets the system back, with all settings and screen-savers intact.
To sum up, 99% of Slashdot readers do not need to care about these security risks, if they choose Linux for their personal or office systems.Those with Windows - a switch to Linux is cheaper than anti-virus s/w PLUS OS cost PLUS frequent updates PLUS frequent reinstalls PLUS loss of data PLUS nuisance.
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What could be done better... (Score:5, Insightful)
up-to-date with almost all security updates[2]."
Well, it seems that 'almost' just isn't good enough. Perhaps there is more to the break in (like unknown holes)?
Sniffing passwords? They must be using 'almost patched' version of SSHd.
Re:What could be done better... (Score:3, Informative)
never have been used to gain root privileges
Openness is good (Score:2, Flamebait)
oh, you didn't know (Score:2)
local root == remote root (Score:5, Interesting)
Certainly the distinction is useful to security students and analysts, but it's misleading for everybody else. "Oh, that one's just a local exploit; not so bad." The OpenBSD advocates promote the fallacy: "only one remote exploit in this millennium!" (or something like that), encouraging us to ignore almost equally damaging exploits in non-core services that provide access to local accounts and more damaging attacks.
There's a similar fallacy in distinguishing security holes from other bugs. Without a depth of analysis that hardly anybody can ever afford, almost any bug might actually be a security hole, too. The OpenBSD people get this one right -- to them, any bug is a security hole until proven otherwise, and they encourage running latest versions -- but almost everybody else gets it wrong. When I fixed a double-free segfault in lib[mumble], nobody posted security warnings about every program that relies on it. despite that double-free bugs can often be exploited.
Debian gets this wrong, and very selectively backports only proven security holes, ignoring the myriad bugfixes that might just as easily be security holes as well. To find holes in stable-branch services, just look for bug fixes in later versions, particularly in libraries used by those services. Failing that, look at new features added shortly before the library-version used. Chances are the last new feature added has bugs that haven't been noted yet, and that might be exploitable.
This might be a good place to mention that the CVS codebase is almost irreparably insecure. The practical implications are: (1) A remotely-accessible CVS server should never be run on a host that does anything else that matters, or that has access to anything else; (2) An anonymous CVS server should never be the same CVS server that is used for checkins, or even run on the same machine. The pserver should be a slave that only gets read access to a copy of the archive. (3) Checkins on remotely-accessible servers should result in patches logged to another archive kept on another, not-remotely-accessible machine. Patches from that server should be posted to the mailing list.
local root != remote root (Score:4, Insightful)
You still need a local account to make use of a local root exploit.
You don't for remote root exploits.
Remote root exploits can be used in worms, local (for the most part) cannot.
Not to say that local root exploits should be overlooked, especially when they seem realtivly simple to create (e.g., bad symlinks)
Besides, this is supposedly an *UNKNOWN* local root exploit..
Of course there are unknown exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why security by patching is fundamentally ineffective against enemies, as opposed to nusances.
Sad day for Debian (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sad day for Debian (Score:4, Interesting)
> a distro that yet again imhop doesnt suck. These guys need to be found and
> buried. Not by the police but by the commmunity.
hear, hear.
it's not a sad day for Debian so much as it is for the community. if Debian can find this supposed new exploit, fix it and publish details, then Debian will rise a little higher in people's esteem.
but why crack Debian in the first place? here I am stumped, but then I've never fully understood the cracker mentality.
ldap? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone who's familiar with system administration on those debian boxes clarify the above statement? Have they disabled LDAP accounts or was it implied that they're going to set up authentication with a ldap backend in the future. If it's the latter then I'm curious as to how having ldap in the equation would have made cracking those system accounts harder.
SuckIt Exploit (Score:5, Informative)
Move the
Patch the kernel with either Grsecurity or Openwall Patch on 2.4.22 kernel and set it as mononthlic kernel, not modular with no open hooks for adding additional modules.
Then I installed the suphp module for PHP to run scripts as users instead of nobody, especially when people trying to exploit it. I get it at www.suphp.org and it works extremely well. Since the changes, I haven't seen any rootkits being successfully implemented on the servers I admin. And note the fact that I manages over 260 servers for various clients points to the track records.
What's up with these anti-Linux attacks? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, what's going on here? Are these simply two unrelated attacks? Is it an attempt by an immature highschooler with some cracking talent to boast to his friends "LOL 1 hax0rred debian.org!?" Is it an attempt by some sort of anti-Linux commandoes to undermine Linux's public image? I almost suspect the latter, but the prime suspect there is Microsoft, who have far too much to lose by going that route and plenty of money for traditional FUD that will make it into "traditional" news channels better anyway. SCO might be crazy enough to do it, but they probably wouldn't want to divert resources away from spewing lawsuits at everyone in existence.
From what I understand of the cracker community, Linux is held in fairly high regard (although I admit I don't try to keep up on the latest in the cracker community). You'd think that black-hats, who tend to be rather immature, when armed with a brand new exploit, would attack a site seen by the general public and post goatse.cx images on the front page, rather than subtly changing Debian packages. So, who's behind all this?
Re:What's up with these anti-Linux attacks? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's up with these anti-Linux attacks? (Score:3, Troll)
Apparently not so secure they were now were they.
So, what's going on here? Are these simply two unrelated attacks? Is it an attempt by an immature highschooler with some cracking talent to boast to his friends "LOL 1 hax0rred debian.org!?" Is it an attempt by some sort of anti-Linux commandoes to undermine Linux's public image? I almost suspect the latter, b
Re:What's up with these anti-Linux attacks? (Score:3, Insightful)
FYI, this has nothing to do with "shoddy security put into Linux". Fact is, a properly secured Linux server is overall more secure than a properly secured Windows server. The problem is that most *distros* (an
Debian physical site security? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Debian physical site security? (Score:4, Informative)
in the US and Netherlands (there are buildd machines available to debian developers in various locations). The machines are beefy enough - HP
recently donated a server with 48 GB RAM, for example. I believe the bandwidth out of ftp.debian.org is Gigabit ethernet (and having only that to the mirrors will be a bottleneck
when sarge is released!)
So, no, they're not in some dudes basement; we have good facilities courtesy of our sponsors.
- Alastair
the linux attitude prevents real security... (Score:3, Insightful)
for every exploit known (and fixed) publically you can bet there are two yet undisclosed and maybe in the hands of the wrong people...
concepts like public key crypto (ssh, ssl), stack guarding (say no to buffer overflows) or process jail (try to escalate privileges from there) are thus essential to implement real security. still ease of setup or performance seems to be more important than safe networking.
perhaps the big desaster has to happen before people understand that projects like openbsd or selinux are not your tinfoil-hat wearing neighbor's business but the only serious choice for any public, responsible service provider.
suckit ... (Score:5, Interesting)
There were quite a lot of similiar reports from the folks all aronud at that time
My big hairy conspiracy theory would be in the line of super zonda type of organization hiring some of the most skilled crackers and r00ting the boxen all around ... for spamming, ddosing or whatever ... welcome to the Wild Wild Net.
Other distros affected??? (Score:4, Insightful)
the unknown (Score:4, Insightful)
If a "bad" hacker comes up with a new root exploit he's not going to e-mail all of the "good" hackers and let them know. He's going to make use of it mercilessly until he's noticed and caught. Microsoft ignores this issue outright and the OSS community tends to skate around it. If the computing public as a whole knew the facts about security then McAfee and Norton wouldn't even be in business. "Updating virus definitions" twice a week is still going to be ten weeks behind the hardcore caffeinated malicious hacker.
The OSS community has dealt with this issue in the most productive manner possible: complete openness and timely notice. Microsoft, on the other hand, would happily allow millions of users to remain compromised for months or years until their internal programmers manage to find the "unknown local root exploit". This could easily result in identities and credit card numbers stolen, bank accounts infiltrated, and possibly even malicious interference with real life relationships and employers just for fun.
Should the software manufacturer be liable? No. Should the user be entitled to know? Yes.
The OSS community is the only solution which addresses this situation correctly.
What debian's not said, clarifications speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
A debian developer (who I'm not going to name but it's not exactly a secret) revealed his password by logging into some machine that had been rooted. Shame on him for using the same password, and the Debian project for not policing that kind of thing. (That said, people do this all the time, even people who do/ought to know better.)
The password 'sniffing' being referenced is not sniffing network packets but rather session IO. If you read the 'developer cleanup' instructions it will be clear that they beleive that the 4 dev boxes that were rooted were being used to collect account and password info from developer's sessions. (Another procedure error, the systems in question probably should not be allowing users with shell access to ssh out to other machines.)
There has been a LOT of speculation that there's a privilege-escalation vulnerability in the kernel version running on the target systems and/or up to the 2.4.22 kernel (I'm dubious, however 2.4.23 has just been released today so who knows).
As many here and elsewhere have wondered, it seems unlikely that a 'kiddie would have access to somthing not yet observed in the wild, and if this is the work of more capable 'bad guys' then it seems equally unlikely that they would have been so noisy as to have been caught in less than a day.
Leaving us really not knowing much about the state of either debian or the kernel at this time. I certainly hope that a more complete complete 'explantaion' will be coming, hopefully soon.
Re:But wait.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows Update is served by Akamai ie Linux.
Now what was your point ?
Re:at which point (Score:2)