Release : 6/3/2002 Author : Spybreak (spybreakat_private) Software: efingerd Versions: 1.3, 1.6.1 Problems: Remote buffer overflow and a dangerous feature Efingerd is a "finger daemon, giving you complete control over what are you going to display about your computer" as is written in the man page. However this is not completely true, as any local user can (even unintentionally) expose more info than was originally intended by an admin. Debian Linux distributes versions 1.3 (stable) and 1.6.1 (unstable). 1.) Remote buffer overflow In the stable version it is possible to remotely cause a buffer overflow condition through an exploitation of a reverse-lookup part of the code: static char *lookup_addr (struct in_addr in) { static char addr[100]; struct hostent *he; if (resolve_addr) { he = gethostbyaddr ((char *)&in, sizeof(struct in_addr),AF_INET); if (he == NULL) strcpy(addr, inet_ntoa(in)); else strcpy(addr, he->h_name); } else strcpy (addr, inet_ntoa (in)); return addr; } Usually efingerd runs as 'nobody'. 2.) The feature But there is another security issue with efingerd (in both versions). When some existing user is fingered, efingerd looks for a ".efingerd" file in that user's home directory and if it does exist and it is executable it tries to execute it - as 'nobody'. The .efingerd's output is sent back to the fingerer. So _whatever_ a local user puts in his .efingerd file, can be executed under nobody UID/GID simply by fingering himself. So getting a nobody/nobody shell is straighforward. This can be very interesting for a potential evildoer going to hide his identity during some nasty actions, for example local DoS attacks. As the logfile is writable by the UID of efingerd, it can be easily manipulated. This feature can be turned off with the -u option.
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