SuSE Security Announcement

25 Aug 1999

A security hole was discovered in the package mentioned above.
Please update as soon as possible or disable the service if you are using
this software on your SuSE Linux installation(s).

Other Linux distributions or operating systems might be affected as
well, please contact your vendor for information about this issue.

Please note, that that we provide this information on as "as-is" basis only.
There is no warranty whatsoever and no liability for any direct, indirect or
incidental damage arising from this information or the installation of
the update package.
______________________________________________________________________________

1. Problem Description

  The way in.identd is started by inetd from a standard /etc/inetd.conf on
  a SuSE Linux distribution may be exploited to mount a Denial-of-Service
  attack against the system.

  When inetd starts in.identd with the "wait" flag and the "-w -t120"
  options, the in.identd will start to listen on the well known port
  while inetd deactivates its own listener for the time in.identd
  is alive.

2. Impact

  If many requests (say more than a hundred or so) are sent to the
  server at nearly the same time, in.identd will fork one child process
  for every request. This will eventually lead to a shortage of system
  resources and the computer will become unresponsive.

3. Solution

  To prevent the described vulnerability, change the start flag
  for in.identd in /etc/inetd.conf from "wait" to "nowait" and the
  in.identd options from "-w -t120 -e" to "-i -e".

  Many system administrators also decide not to run in.identd at all for
  security reasons, so this may a viable alternative in its own right.

______________________________________________________________________________

Webpage for patches:
        http://www.suse.de/patches/index.html

or try the following web pages for a list of mirrors:

        http://www.suse.de/ftp.html
        http://www.suse.com/ftp_new.html

______________________________________________________________________________

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______________________________________________________________________________

If you want to report *NEW* security bugs in the SuSE Linux Distribution
please send an email to security@suse.de or call our support line.
You may use pgp with the public key below to ensure confidentiality.
______________________________________________________________________________

  This information is provided freely to everyone interested and may
  be redistributed provided that it is not altered in any way.

Type Bits/KeyID    Date       User ID
pub  2048/3D25D3D9 1999/03/06 SuSE Security Team <security@suse.de>

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Thomas Biege

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