Your .iso/.rpm/.tgz at risk!
Saw this over at
SNN
Recently on Slashdot, in an article about the recent IIS 5.0 remote exploit, someone complained that Linux vulnerabilities wern't widly publisized enough. Another person responded that most of the vulnerabilies weren't threatening enough to publisize on Slashdot.
Here's an example, which I mention because I found this particular vulnerability:
"Bugzilla shell exploit :
That's a remote unprivileged-user (not root) exploit in a not-commonly-installed application."
First of all, a shell on any Unix should be considered a superuser shell. That's as true for Linux as it is for Solaris, Irix, OpenBSD, or Argus Pitbull. Think of it as a usefull axiom for risk management, if you must. But it has remained true over the course of all Unixes for the lifetime of the Unix family.
Secondly, Bugzilla is commonly installed on systems that serve source code or binary distributions of software. Should those systems be compromised, at any level, all of your source code that you downloaded must be re-audited for trojans, and every binary is suspect.
Most people don't check cryptographic signatures on every piece of software, and this Bugzilla bug has been around for quite some time and was easy to find. Is it so unreasonable that someone else might have found it and compromised your latest download?
