Re: Denial of Service flaw in Apache

From: Marc Slemko (marcsat_private)
Date: Mon Jan 07 2002 - 07:14:24 PST

  • Next message: Trustix Secure Linux Advisor: "TSLSA-2002-0003 - mutt"

    On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, Tozz wrote:
    
    > Hello,
    > 
    > Today I stumbled on a little issue in Apache. My webhosting company creates
    > log files for each seperate user/domain, so every user is able to download
    > his own access / error logs.
    
    [...etc etc etc...]
    
    I will tell you the same thing that I told you when you sent the
    same thing to securityat_private:
    
    The documentation explicitly states that you must not allow non-trusted
    users write access to the logs directory.  It is a major security hole
    because they are opened by the user that starts apache (ie. normally
    root).  This is a done this way on purpose, however it requires that
    the server not be misconfigured.  If you have a setup where a random
    user can write to a logs directory, then you have a hell of a lot more
    to worry about than them causing the server to not start!
    
    Having a non-existant log directory is considered a major configuration
    error, and it is not appropriate for Apache to blindly continue on
    trying to guess what it should do (and possibly not logging anything).
    
    Also, note that it is NOT only missing log directories that will cause
    Apache to fail to startup correctly, there are any number of major
    configuration errors that will cause it to do the same thing.  On
    purpose.
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Jan 07 2002 - 14:01:22 PST