Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: DoS attack: apache (& other) .htaccess Authentication
From: dustin () spy net (Dustin Sallings)
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 22:47:26 -0800
If you're now trying to open this directory (or any file within) and enter any user / password combination, you'll get a hanging (death running) client. This is, because it's reading /dev/zero and searches for a colon (':') to separate the user name from the password field (mod_auth.c, get_pw(), line 127).[...]Because also other authentication methods may be exploitable I would prefer to patch it in a way that it's no longer be available to open /dev/zero (or any other device) for reading, so I patched fpopen() in alloc.c:perhaps you should stat the file and make sure its a normal file? There may be other device files which cause problems by virtue of having lots of data, or by blocking for long periods of time. For example a blocking read on a dialup device that waits for carrier sense on a modem. Is there any reason to allow device files to be read from the config? This may not stop all possible attacks. Normal files might be used to indefinitely block the daemon. For example some systems allow regular users to make NFS mounts. In this case an NFS server can be brought up, mounted, then brought down. The httpd reading an nfs mounted file would then block for a long period of time while NFS times out. The same result can be achieved by performing a denial of service attack against an already existing NFS mount. Are there other ways to cause long blocking times when reading normal files? Do any common unix systems have mandatory file locking?
A size limit might not be a bad thing to do. Even a normal file (as someone here mentioned) can do nasty things to the webserver. Consider: bleu:~/public_html 159> ls -l .htpasswd -rw------- 1 dustin staff 1000000000000 Jan 15 22:44 .htpasswd That's a perfectly real file, but if my webserver tried to find a password in there... -- Taos Mountain TS My girlfriend asked me which one I like better. pub 1024/3CAE01D5 1994/11/03 Dustin Sallings <dustin () spy net> | Key fingerprint = 87 02 57 08 02 D0 DA D6 C8 0F 3E 65 51 98 D8 BE L_______________________ I hope the answer won't upset her. ____________
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- Re: DoS attack: apache (& other) .htaccess Authentication Marc Slemko (Jan 14)
- Re: DoS attack: apache (& other) .htaccess Authentication Tim Newsham (Jan 15)
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