nanog mailing list archives
Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc
From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <rs () bifrost seastrom com>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 14:20:03 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 97 10:15 PST From: Randy Bush <randy () psg com> gated does not have that illegal instruction sequence in it. compilers don't generate it. httpd does not have the sequence. Even on closed systems, the exposed daemons (sendmail/smap, httpd, gated, inetd) can not be safely said to not have buffer overflow holes, as new ones are found periodically. What this means is that anyone can overflow a buffer into stack space and pop code in in place of a return.... whereas the threat profile this used to present was that someone could go through all sorts of gyrations, upload a tiny exploit to hack root, etc., the threat profile it now presents is quite a bit more serious -- they now have the functional equivalent of a user-mode "halt" instruction. While you used to be fairly safe if you ran smap (for instance; i don't know of any specific holes in smap) in a chrooted jail, now that defense doesn't stop some punk from kicking your butt offline. While I'd rather see this thread continued in more appropriate fora, I observe that Intel hardware has found its way into my infrastructure (and I'd suspect the infrastructure of even some large ISPs) because its excellent price-performance figures allow us to swallow our pride (and distaste at certain aspects of the architecture) and deploy them in a production environment. Because of the potential operational impact of this misfeature, I must concede that nanog is not a wholly inappropriate forum for this discussion and I must politely disagree with my esteemed colleague from Washington State. ;-) ---Rob
Current thread:
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc, (continued)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Vijay Gill (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Randy Bush (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Bruce Robertson (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Leigh Porter (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Sharif Torpis (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Leigh Porter (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Randy Bush (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Greg A. Woods (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Vijay Gill (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Leo Seto (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Randy Bush (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Greg A. Woods (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Robert E. Seastrom (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Randy Bush (Nov 12)
- Message not available
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Jay R. Ashworth (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Network Operations Center (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc David Schiffrin (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Nanog Maillist (Nov 12)
- Message not available
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Jay R. Ashworth (Nov 12)
- Re: Potentially dangerous Pentium bug disc Aaron Beck (Nov 12)