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Security: FUD, Panic, Hype, Fearless Security and Security Enhancements to the LVFS

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Thursday 24th of January 2019 03:26:11 PM Filed under
Security
  • Hackers Mine Monero (XMR) after Breaching Linux Systems in China [Ed: Characterising this as a "Linux" problem, focusing on mining of coins, almost no attention paid to how GNU/Linux gets cracked in the first place (often nothing at all to do with Linux or even GNU)]
  • Remote Code Execution Flaw in APT Linux Package Manager allows man-in-the-middle attack

    Yesterday a remote code execution bug was found in the APT high-level package manager used by Debian, Ubuntu, and other related Linux distributions. Max Justicz, the security researcher who discovered the bug, says that the bug “allows a network man-in-the-middle (or a malicious package mirror) to execute arbitrary code as root on a machine installing any package.”

    Justicz’s blog post states that the vulnerable versions of APT don’t properly sanitize certain parameters during HTTP redirects. An attacker can take advantage of this and perform a remote man-in-the-middle attack to inject malicious content, thus tricking the system to install certain altered packages.
    HTTP redirects while using apt-get

  • Flaw in APT Utility Allows Malicious Package Installation

    A couple of popular Linux distributions have a vulnerability in the main package-management interface that an attacker could use to trick a user into installing a malicious package that would then give the attacker root access on the target machine.

    The vulnerability is in the APT package manager, which handles the way that software packages are downloaded and installed on Linux systems, including Debian and Ubuntu. Researcher Max Justicz discovered a flaw in APT that involves the way that the utility handles redirects during the installation process that an attacker on the network could exploit to get root privileges on a victim’s machine.

  • Remote Code Execution Bug Patched in APT Linux Package Manager

    Independent consultant and security contractor Max Justicz discovered a remote code execution issue in the APT high level package manager used by Debian, Ubuntu, and other related Linux distributions.

    As described by Justicz, the APT vulnerability present in the package manager starting with version 0.8.15 "allows a network man-in-the-middle (or a malicious package mirror) to execute arbitrary code as root on a machine installing any package. The bug has been fixed in the latest versions of apt."

  • Fearless Security: Memory Safety

    Last year, Mozilla shipped Quantum CSS in Firefox, which was the culmination of 8 years of investment in Rust, a memory-safe systems programming language, and over a year of rewriting a major browser component in Rust. Until now, all major browser engines have been written in C++, mostly for performance reasons. However, with great performance comes great (memory) responsibility: C++ programmers have to manually manage memory, which opens a Pandora’s box of vulnerabilities. Rust not only prevents these kinds of errors, but the techniques it uses to do so also prevent data races, allowing programmers to reason more effectively about parallel code.

    [...]

    Memory management is crucial to both the performance and the security of applications. This section will discuss the basic memory model. One key concept is pointers. A pointer is a variable that stores a memory address. If we visit that memory address, there will be some data there, so we say that the pointer is a reference to (or points to) that data. Just like a home address shows people where to find you, a memory address shows a program where to find data.

    Everything in a program is located at a particular memory address, including code instructions. Pointer misuse can cause serious security vulnerabilities, including information leakage and arbitrary code execution.

  • What Makes Linux More Secure Than Windows?

    In reality, this isn't necessarily thanks to Linux being a better operating system. Instead, it’s mostly because of the inherent issues with a system like Windows. Updating Windows 10 takes up so many system resources that a lot of people will simply turn it off, losing crucial security updates which they can't afford to live without. This has resulting in huge issues over the last couple of years, with a couple of notable examples cause widespread chaos for users around the world. Depending on the distro you choose, Linux won’t cause this issue, with updates being handled quietly in the background.

    Along with being laced with update-related drawbacks, Windows has a built-in feature which a lot of modern users would consider to be very insecure; data collection. As part of the recommended install settings for the OS, data about your usage will be sent to Microsoft to help them to "improve their products". While they may promise not to sell or share this information, a lot of companies have made this promise over the last few years, and it doesn't often mean much.

  • Security Enhancements to the LVFS

    I’ve just deployed two security enhancements to the LVFS. It’s important to note that is is proactive in response to suggestions from OEMs, and there has not been any security issue with the service.

»

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