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Many 2.0 kernels allow blind ip-spoofing

Written By
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Web Webster
Web Webster
Mar 20, 1999
______________________________________________________________________________

                        SuSE Security Announcement

        Packages: devs-*
                  linux-2.0.35 and below
        Date:     Thu Mar 18 10:22:11 CET 1999
        Affected: SuSE 6.0 and below, other Linux distributions
                  SuSE 5.3 and below, other Linux distributions

______________________________________________________________________________

A security whole 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 default permissions on /dev/kmem is insecure.

    A bug in all Linux 2.0.x kernels except 2.0.36 have a vulnerability
    which makes blind ip-spoofing possible.

2. Impact

    If programs like lsof have got vulnerabilities (like buffer overflows)
    root access can easily be obtained.
    Note that lsof *had* a buffer overflow, for which SuSE issued a bug fix
    some time ago. Please ensure that you installed it.

    IP addresses used for authentication or logging can't be relied on.
    If services which rely on trust are used on a system, remote access
    to a system can be obtained.
    No authentication should rely on IP addresses anyway ...

3. Solution

    Execute the following command:

        /bin/chmod 640 /dev/kmem

    Install the 2.0.36 or a 2.2.x kernel.
    They are available from our webserver (see below)

______________________________________________________________________________

Here is the md5 checksum of the upgrade package, please verify this
before installing the new package:

a0b520d70026ef236efd2c7d7c87b233  linux-2.0.36.tar.gz
3e737f6f33534dd15c440cc5c51ebcb5  linux-2.0.36.SuSE.tgz
4bd690ca533b6c07e2f81f160e59ee6c  linux-2.2.3.tar.gz

______________________________________________________________________________

You will find the update on our ftp-Server:

        ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse_update/kernel/
        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/en/ftp.html
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Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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