David Bolt wrote: > On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Clayton wrote:- > > <snip> > >>This does not account for buffer overflow exploits etc...I seem to >>remember one recently (in the past year) that would give you root >>access to a remote machine... scary except that you had to be root >>already to get into the state where the exploit could be triggered.. >>giving you root access to something you were already logged into as >>root... so not much of an exploit. > > If you can get a normal user to execute something that is able to use a > local root exploit, that users system could be very easily compromised. > All it would need is for whatever used the root exploit install a > root-kit, downloading whatever is needed as required, and the system can > end up in a similar state as a virus-infected Windows system. > > However, all this is based upon the premise that you have a user[0] so > idiotic that they'd specifically save an attachment, make it executable, > actually open this executable file, and that the exploit it wishes to > exploit is actually present on that system. Any of these don't occur, > there will be no infection. >
As more and more file types get linked to more applications I am not so sure that "executing" something has the same meaning it used to. Say you download a new screen saver, you never really execute that, but your window manager utilizes the data in it. Your window manager runs on X, X runs as root... Yeah its a huge round-about way, but really can anyone say something similar with X or something else, is absolutely impossible? > Of course, there's also those infections that occur without user > intervention, but those tend to come in through security holes in server > daemons which are unlikely to be running on a normal users desktop > system. > > Yup, I would classify those more as worms or exploits rather than virii. But most of the popular services have had some issues, ftp, mail, http, ssh... > [0] Of which I'm absolutely certain there either are some right now, or > there will be some in the future. > I totally agree. Windows is the low hanging fruit. People can get the most bang for the least effort there. They want a zombie network that can spam the world, right now its far easier to develop something for Windows than to do the same for Linux. > Regards, > David Bolt > Michael -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
