The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Computers => Topic started by: EC on June 20, 2017, 11:39:01 pm
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What is the Stack Clash?
The Stack Clash is a vulnerability in the memory management of several operating systems. It affects Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD and Solaris, on i386 and amd64. It can be exploited by attackers to corrupt memory and execute arbitrary code.
Qualys researchers discovered this vulnerability and developed seven exploits and seven proofs of concept for this weakness, then worked closely with vendors to develop patches. As a result we are releasing this advisory today as a coordinated effort, and patches for all distributions are available June 19, 2017. We strongly recommend that users place a high priority on patching these vulnerabilities immediately.
What is the Stack Clash vulnerability, precisely?
Each program running on a computer uses a special memory region called the stack. This memory region is special because it grows automatically when the program needs more stack memory. But if it grows too much and gets too close to another memory region, the program may confuse the stack with the other memory region. An attacker can exploit this confusion to overwrite the stack with the other memory region, or the other way around.
More: https://blog.qualys.com/securitylabs/2017/06/19/the-stack-clash
I don't use Linux, but I know several here do.
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Meh... these kind of buffer overrun and smash the stack, and nop sleds exist in all OS's, not just unix/linux.
Bottom line: don't let anyone have a shell account on your system that you don't trust. Period.
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Meh... these kind of buffer overrun and smash the stack, and nop sleds exist in all OS's, not just unix/linux.
Bottom line: don't let anyone have a shell account on your system that you don't trust. Period.
Seconded. From the Qualys report:
"Our research has mainly focused on local exploitation: as of this writing on June 19, 2017, we do not know of any remotely exploitable application."