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Re: Critical bash vulnerability CVE-2014-6271


From: "g () 1337 io" <g () 1337 io>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 10:30:51 -0700

A quick test that was posted somewhere this morning..

Vulnerable or Not?
You can check if you're vulnerable by running the following commands
(code provided by the CSA). Open a terminal window and enter the
following command at the $ prompt:

env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"

If you're vulnerable it'll print:

vulnerable
this is a test

If you've updated Bash you'll only see:

this is a test

On 9/25/14 8:58 AM, Paul Vixie wrote:


Philip Cheong <mailto:philip.cheong () elastx se>
Thursday, September 25, 2014 5:39 AM
Worse that heartbleed?

i think so. more below.

http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2014-6271

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/09/bug-in-bash-shell-creates-big-security-hole-on-anything-with-nix-in-it/

heartbleed was a read-only privilege escalation, and i normally consider
privilege escalation vulns "worse than" remote code execution vulns. as
an example, the private key used by the SSL-enabled server was exposed
to read access, making heartbleed also a credential compromise vuln.
that's a high score because of all the second-order effects reachable
once you have a credential compromise.

however, i'd score this bash bug higher, because many online systems
have multiple privilege escalation vulns which are reachable once you
have remote code execution capability, and preventing remote code
execution is the "crunchy exterior" to the privilege escalation's "soft
gooey interior". (borrowing those quoted terms from cheswick et al,
"firewalls", first edition.)

the other reason to score the bash bug higher than heartbleed is the
several-orders-of-magnitude greater attack surface. systems that use
bash and put it in a data path (web CGI and dhcp client-side hooks being
examples) are far more numerous than systems which used openssl, and so
i expect the long term impact of this bash bug to be far greater than
from heartbleed.

the long tail problem, wherein many instances of this bash bug are not
inventoried, and of those inventoried, most are not field upgradeable,
and of those field upgradeable, most are operated without auditing. that
means: this bash bug will still be globally available to miscreants even
after all humans now living are dead and the world contains only our
descendants.

fixing apple and redhat and other systems we actually know about is the
easy, and insigificant, part of this puzzle.


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