On Wednesday 29 December 2004 11:07, James M. Patton wrote:
Er, a vulnerablility that hasn't been discovered isn't a danger to
anyone > and doesn't need protecting against! I'm not sure what you mean to say
here.
Mail interface giving you shit huh ;)
I would sure hope that this is NOT the views of the Novell/SuSE team...
Obviously not.....
Not that many I suspect. SSP is unlikely to make a vulnerability unexploitable, just harder to exploit. If I were penetration testing a
machine I knew to be using SSP I'd just craft my exploit accordingly. Sometimes SSP/Stackguard/Stackshield/et al make it impossible to
exploit a
vulnerability, but that is far from guaranteed. More likely the
attacker
just needs to try harder.
You appear to be under the impression that these sorts of tools offer genuine protection. They don't. They sometimes downgrade a code
execution
exploit into a denial of service (because the "protected" program will
still crash when its buffer is overflowed), but in general they just
force
the attacker to work harder.
But when dealing with script kiddies, any delay or difficulties you can cause very well may make the difference. In general, anything that one can do to increase the security of an information system under their control is a good thing. And any tools the vendors can provide us only helps to increase the security posture of our systems.
Do you say that at work? From the addy I see Military, and I know you guys have some Windows boxes somewhere, unless they were finally taken out. scares me when the Army uses Windows.... Or any other team who protects.
Downgrading a local / remote compromise (or code execution exploit) to a denial of service is a great step forward. It could mean the difference of joe hacker crashing your system or having your shadow file - which would you prefer? I personally would prefer that my system be crashed than having to deal with a security incident.
And lose my uptime???????? That bastard better hope he grabs the shadow file, at least that way I have one IP in the logs instead of 300 a second. Then I can retaliate. What's he going to do, say he was rooting me and I attacked him ? -- ----------------------------------------------- http://www.misfits.com Punk Rock, Opiates, and SUSE Linux. das Blut in den Adern erstarren lassen. Kuerbis der Zuhaelter