Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: debian dhcpd, old format string bug
From: Javier Fernandez-Sanguino <jfernandez () germinus com>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 18:14:28 +0100
infamous41md () hotpop com wrote:
On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 10:31:38 +1000 Tarragon Allen <tarragon () onthe net au> wrote:On Tuesday 26 October 2004 10:37, infamous41md () hotpop com wrote:Firstly, good etiquette would have been for you to actually report the bug with Debian. I don't see any bugs raised against any of the appropriate packages regarding this.I've tried contacting the person in charge of the debian security audit project numerous times to try and co-ordinate audits, and he doesn't respond. I have better things to do with my time. I don't provide notice when people disregard my emails. If you don't like, I don't care. My mother already taught me all the etiquette I need, but thanks for the moral support. Btw, is it salad fork left, or dinner fork left?
The Debian audit people are not the same as the official Debian security team, which is the one in charge of preparing security advisories and fixing security bugs in the stable release.
Please read: http://www.debian.org/security/faqThe first group is an internal project that is reviewing parts of Debian and submitting bugs to the stable and unstable release, the second group fixes only the former, while the later is fixed by the package maintainers themselves.
http://www.debian.org/security/audit/As to this vulnerability, CA-2002-12 is referenced as CAN-2002-0702 [1], that, based on the page that lists lists vulnerabilities that do not affect the current Debian stable release [2] does not apply to the dhcp3-server packages. And, indeed, reviewing the comon/print.c file in dhcp3-server's source code you can see:
if (errorp) log_error ("%s", obuf); else log_info ("%s", obuf); instead of the (vulnerable): if (errorp) log_error (obuf); else log_info (obuf);Which fixes the issue (see [3]). The code is _not_ present in the dhcp packages (version 2.0pl5-11), so they aren't vulnerable to _this_ issue either.
I'm saying, grep -rn syslog * | grep -v \". Soon after I found that, I googled and found the CERT detailing a format string in logging code. I assumed it was the exact same thing I just found. I spoke with some debian person about thisyesterday, or day before, and they can release an advisory to clear it up.
That grep line brings a lot of code, some of it might be vulnerable to format string attacks, but it's not related to the CERT advisory at all. For those not having the code at hand:
$ grep -B 2 -A 2 -rn syslog * | grep -v \" (...) common/errwarn.c-73-#ifndef DEBUG common/errwarn.c:74: syslog (log_priority | LOG_ERR, mbuf); common/errwarn.c-75-#endifWhich could be easily fixed to prevent a format string attack (but is not and is indeed vulnerable). Maybe this bug is related to CAN-2001-0181 (BID-2215). I don't have access to Caldera's code so I can review that...
Regards Javier [1] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2002-0702 [2] http://www.debian.org/security/nonvulns-wood [3] http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/vulnwatch/2002-q2/0063.html
Current thread:
- Re: debian dhcpd, old format string bug Javier Fernandez-Sanguino (Nov 02)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: debian dhcpd, old format string bug Martin Schulze (Nov 05)