Three years and ten months without a patch

["David Litchfield" <davidl () ngssoftware com>]

Whilst looking over old Oracle bugs I discovered that a _fully_ _patched_
8.1.7.4 Oracle server is still vulnerable to the old extproc flaw
[http://www.ngssoftware.com/advisories/oraplsextproc.txt]; this flaw, when
exploited, allows a remote attacker without a userID and password to take
control of the server. Why, you may ask, has a supported product gone for so
long without a patch for a serious problem that was made public 3 years and
10 months ago and reported to Oracle over 4 years ago? The answer, according
to Alert 57
[http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/pdf/2003alert57.pdf], is
that Oracle outright decided not to fix it. They claim "architectural
constraints" are the problem even though they managed to overcome these same
constraints on newer versions of Oracle. 

Users of 8.1.7.4 would do well to heed the advice offered in Alert 57 if
they've not already done so.

Cheers,
David Litchfield
http://www.databasesecurity.com/
http://www.ngssoftware.com/

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