Hackers rally behind Cisco flaw finder

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Not hackers, sysadmins

Hah, so we finally get to see it.

http://cryptome.org/

It's a weakness in Cisco's heap checking & security daemons. He found a buffer overflow, and once he found that overflow, figured out how to defeat their heap checking programs which would otherwise reboot the router.
(They have a flag that tell it your crashing already so don't bother with the heap checker!).

Cisco fixed that particular overflow without fixing the heap checking. Cisco didn't put out an advisory so customers would know to upgrade until this Friday. Instead opting for some deal with ISS. (Nice going Cisco/ISS).

Lynn doesn't reveal the original buffer overflow in this slide show so he doesn't put users at risk.

The heap checker is a side show, if Cisco bounds checked all their buffers (the better option than detecting corruption after the fact), then the heap checker is a bonus, not essential.

Not a good-guy gad-guy situation, everyone comes off bad in that. Also I'm wrong for defending Lynn 100% here yesterday, he could have warned everyone that there was a heap overflow that Cisco had fixed but hadn't disclosed and to upgrade their firmware immediately, and that would have had the positive effect without the negative one.

Posted by: Nigel Johnstone   Posted on: 07/31/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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