OutHouse
Lifer
The GHOST vulnerability is a serious weakness in the Linux glibc library. It allows attackers to remotely take complete control of the victim system without having any prior knowledge of system credentials. CVE-2015-0235 has been assigned to this issue.
Qualys security researchers discovered this bug and worked closely with Linux distribution vendors. And as a result of that we are releasing this advisory today as a co-ordinated effort, and patches for all distribution are available January 27, 2015.
What is glibc?
The GNU C Library or glibc is an implementation of the standard C library and a core part of the Linux operating system. Without this library a Linux system will not function.
What is the vulnerability?
During a code audit Qualys researchers discovered a buffer overflow in the __nss_hostname_digits_dots() function of glibc. This bug can be triggered both locally and remotely via all the gethostbyname*() functions. Applications have access to the DNS resolver primarily through the gethostbyname*() set of functions. These functions convert a hostname into an IP address.
What versions and operating systems are affected?
The first vulnerable version of the GNU C Library affected by this is glibc-2.2, released on November 10, 2000. We identified a number of factors that mitigate the impact of this bug. In particular, we discovered that it was fixed on May 21, 2013 (between the releases of glibc-2.17 and glibc-2.18). Unfortunately, it was not recognized as a security threat; as a result, most stable and long-term-support distributions were left exposed including Debian 7 (wheezy), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 & 7, CentOS 6 & 7, Ubuntu 12.04, for example.
https://community.qualys.com/blogs/laws-of-vulnerabilities/2015/01/27/the-ghost-vulnerability
Qualys security researchers discovered this bug and worked closely with Linux distribution vendors. And as a result of that we are releasing this advisory today as a co-ordinated effort, and patches for all distribution are available January 27, 2015.
What is glibc?
The GNU C Library or glibc is an implementation of the standard C library and a core part of the Linux operating system. Without this library a Linux system will not function.
What is the vulnerability?
During a code audit Qualys researchers discovered a buffer overflow in the __nss_hostname_digits_dots() function of glibc. This bug can be triggered both locally and remotely via all the gethostbyname*() functions. Applications have access to the DNS resolver primarily through the gethostbyname*() set of functions. These functions convert a hostname into an IP address.
What versions and operating systems are affected?
The first vulnerable version of the GNU C Library affected by this is glibc-2.2, released on November 10, 2000. We identified a number of factors that mitigate the impact of this bug. In particular, we discovered that it was fixed on May 21, 2013 (between the releases of glibc-2.17 and glibc-2.18). Unfortunately, it was not recognized as a security threat; as a result, most stable and long-term-support distributions were left exposed including Debian 7 (wheezy), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 & 7, CentOS 6 & 7, Ubuntu 12.04, for example.
https://community.qualys.com/blogs/laws-of-vulnerabilities/2015/01/27/the-ghost-vulnerability
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