Re: looking for recursion stack overflow exploit

From: Liudvikas Bukys (bukysat_private)
Date: Mon Nov 25 2002 - 07:57:32 PST

  • Next message: Matthew Murphy: "acFreeProxy Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability/Possible DoS"

    Thanks for the suggestions on possible uses of recursion stack overflow.
    
    FYI, the reason I ask is because I discovered an unexpectedly easy way
    to cause arbitrarily deep recursion in a piece of very commonly-deployed
    software.  If ANYONE could point out to me any example of recursion stack
    overflow leading to remote execution, I'd dig a lot harder.
    
    At this point, nobody has identified a known exploit like this, but the
    idea of overflows among thread stacks is getting close -- if thread
    stack environments are really unsafe enough.
    
    So: How safe are the threads implementations on common platforms?
    It looks like Unix threaded web servers typically use POSIX threads.
    (Of course, most Unix web servers are pre-forked non-threaded Apache 1.x.)
    I assume the Windows threaded web servers use native threads,
    perhaps through a POSIX glue library.
    
    That's the next thing I'll be looking at.
    If anybody knows already, information would be welcome.
    
    If it turns out that recusion stack overflows in any or all of these
    thread implementations spill over onto the execution environment of
    other threads, then, well -- this may be easier to exploit than you think.
    
    Keep those cards a letters coming.
    Thanks.
    
    Liudvikas Bukys
    bukysat_private
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Nov 25 2002 - 11:34:51 PST