Re: DJB's students release 44 *nix software vulnerability advisories

On Tue, 2004-12-21 at 14:34 -0600, milw0rm Inc. wrote:
> /* 
> Two points.
> Regarding local versus remote, look at it this way:  You have a 100%
> secure system.  Then you install NASM.  Now a user FROM THE NETWORK can
> send you some tainted assembly code for you to assemble and he can
> compromise your account.
> */ 
>
> quote "for you to assemble"
>
> Its a user error.  Your not remotely exploiting anything but the trust
> from the user.
Although I agree with you that in the vast majority of cases this
exploit would require user interaction, there are corner cases where
this can be successfully exploited remotely:
* gentoo systems by compromising one of the master servers (or more
simply by hijacking the connection to one of the those servers) to serve
the malicious file - but in this case you probably don't really need
this exploit to compromise the system.
* other automated build systems (no generic name comes to mind) which
download the files they work on from other systems - which may not be
trusted to the point that grants a shell but just enough to provide
input.
* compromising any open-source software's repository that already uses
nasm and placing the exploit file in the default build target - tough,
but not impossible (it has happened before and will happen again).

I guess this is just not "remotely expoitable" in the usual sense
(direct attack vector)


A.M
> //str0ke