[39883] in Cypherpunks
Re: Another Netscape Bug (and possible security hole)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Herb Sutter)
Fri Sep 22 09:45:28 1995
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 09:47:35 -0400
To: jsw@neon.netscape.com (Jeff Weinstein), cypherpunks@toad.com
From: herbs@interlog.com (Herb Sutter)
At 07:33 1995.09.22 GMT, Jeff Weinstein wrote:
>In article <199509220612.CAA11441@clark.net>, rjc@clark.net (Ray Cromwell)
writes:
>> I've found a Netscape bug which I suspect is a buffer overflow and
>> may have the potential for serious damage. If it is an overflow bug,
>> then it may be possible to infect every computer which accesses a web
>> page with Netscape. To see the bug, create an html file containing
>> the following:
>
> Thanks for the report. I will make sure that this is fixed.
>
> --Jeff
Don't just look at this bug, though... check ALL your static buffers and
include code to check for overflow writes. For example, if Netscape is
written in C or C++ and the above code uses strcpy(), you could change
strcpy() to strncpy() everywhere (and then set the last char to null in case
strncpy() didn't). Your programmers will know what I mean.
Herb
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