On Friday 08 February 2008 14:36:00 Aaron Kulkis wrote:
Other than *very* *old*, uncorrected code with buffer-overflow vulnerabilities, due to calls to strcat(3) instead of strncat(3), and similar pitfalls which are now very well understood since the first use in th 1987 Morris Worm, you have to provide some hard documentation (i.e. code sections) to make your point here.
Well, no, the morris worm wasn't the first time it was used. This paper http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~spaf/tech-reps/823.pdf was written shortly after the worm incident, and it describes buffer overflows as Although experienced C programmers are aware of the problems with these routines, they continue to use them. I would say the situation is similar today. Experienced programmers are aware of the problems, but some continue to use the problematic functions, and inexperienced programmers just don't know any better We still see security patches issued for buffer overruns We shouldn't panic, but we also shouldn't become complacent. I have complained in the past about the disturbing practice of encouraging people to disable signature checks on rpms, simply because it makes it easier to install a package. Given this practice, that would be a brilliant way of introducing bad code on a system And bad code doesn't have to be "if(!strcmp(user, "blackhat") strcat(passwd, "password");", it could just as well be to change fgets() to gets(). I'd like to see the code review that would catch that in a hurry, and it would then be trivial to crack the program Anders -- Madness takes its toll -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org