Re: EMERGENCY: new remote root exploit in UW imapd

From: Kragen (kragenat_private)
Date: Fri Jul 17 1998 - 07:14:47 PDT

  • Next message: Niall Smart: "Re: EMERGENCY: new remote root exploit in UW imapd"

    On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, Craig Spannring wrote:
    > Anonymous writes:
    >  > In some ways, it is depressing to find this new hole.  Programmers are
    >  > still making the same mistakes they have made for years.  Doesn't anyone
    >  > learn from the past?  Can strcpy() ever be used safely?  Perhaps the
    >  > software development community, and certainly those writing network service
    >  > daemons that run as root, should discontinue using *any* C library
    >
    > C should not be used for trusted programs.  The lack of true arrays
    > with array bounds checking alone makes it too hazardous.
    
    Many of the people on this list already know this, but there are
    experimental bounds-checking extensions to gcc that do exactly what
    you're looking for:
    
    The first work I know of on bounds-checking for gcc was done by Richard
    W. M. Jones and Paul Kelly, and is at
    http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~phjk/BoundsChecking.html
    Greg McGary <gkmat_private> did some other work.  Announcement:
    http://www.cygnus.com/ml/egcs/1998-May/0073.html
    Richard Jones and Herman ten Brugge did other work.  Announcement:
    http://www.cygnus.com/ml/egcs/1998-May/0557.html
    Greg compares different approaches in
    http://www.cygnus.com/ml/egcs/1998-May/0559.html
    
    Kragen
    



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