Security: Libsafe

[kevin at mandrakesoft.com (Kevin P. Lawton)]

Here's a forward of a reaction to your posting I sent
to an internal Mandrake list:

> > I was just browsing through linux.com and found an 
> > article about libsafe.  This is a library that Bell 
> > Labs just released (LGPL) to detect and stop buffer 
> > overflow attacks.
> > 
> > If you put it on your LD_PRELOAD, its functions will be 
> > used in place of strcpy, strcat, getwd, gets, [vf]
> > scanf, realpath, and [v]sprintf.  
> > 
> > Its behavior on detecting a buffer overflow is to kill 
> > the application and its process group (SIGKILL), and to 
> > log an error message to /var/log/security.
> > 
> > Personally, I would prefer it to at least have the 
> > option to silently perform the function up to the point 
> > of the buffer overrun and return, rather than killing 
> > the process.  

This could lead to intrusion and log deletion.


> > I don't sit on my box enough to justify 
> > the possibility of just outright killing sendmail.  :(

Eyh, don't be afraid, we just kill the children, not
the parent.
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