Extremely Severe Bug Leaves Dizzying Number of Software and Devices Vulnerable
Since 2008, vulnerability has left apps and hardware open to remote hijacking.
Dan Goodin | Februrary 16, 2016
Researchers have discovered a potentially catastrophic flaw in one of the Internet's core building blocks that leaves hundreds or thousands of apps and hardware devices vulnerable to attacks that can take complete control over them.
The vulnerability was introduced in 2008 in GNU C Library, a collection of open source code that powers thousands of standalone applications and most distributions of Linux, including those distributed with routers and other types of hardware. A function known as getaddrinfo() that performs domain-name lookups contains a buffer overflow bug that allows attackers to remotely execute malicious code. It can be exploited when vulnerable devices or apps make queries to attacker-controlled domain names or domain name servers or when they're exposed to man-in-the-middle attacks where the adversary has the ability to monitor and manipulate data passing between a vulnerable device and the open Internet. All versions of glibc after 2.9 are vulnerable.
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| Source: https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/457759 |
<more at http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/extremely-severe-bug-leaves-dizzying-number-of-apps-and-devices-vulnerable/; related links are articles: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/how-security-flaws-work-the-buffer-overflow/ (How security flaws work: The buffer overflow. Starting with the 1988 Morris Worm, this flaw has bitten everyone from Linux to Windows. August 25, 2015) and https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/457759 (Vulnerability Notes Database. Vulnerability Note VU#457759: glibc vulnerable to stack buffer overflow in DNS resolver. February 17, 2016)>
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