[96811] in RedHat Linux List
Re: RedHat bugs???
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Bridge)
Thu Oct 29 13:05:48 1998
From: "Mike Bridge" <mike@bridgecanada.com>
To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 10:35:11 -0700
In-reply-to: <36388219.4D525D58@dinamicmultimedia.es>
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list@redhat.com
I've recently talked to about 10 or so administrators who were "trying out"
Linux on their sites and had their machines broken into by hackers. All
of them were using unpatched distributions of RedHat 5.x, and most of
them were shocked by the experience and are wiping Linux off and
installing NT. One guy told me he had a machine running RedHat 5.0 for
one day before someone hacked in and installed an IRC bot on it. I think
this is a big concern- this is generating a bad reputation for RedHat and
Linux as an insecure environment.
I think it should really be part of the installation process to inform people
how important it is to go to the RedHat site and get the patches. Then
they should be told to read the current security FAQ and subscribe to a
mailing list which will warn them of future security problems. There are
lots and lots of people with lots and lots of time on their hands who take
advantage of these holes every day, and it's really bad for Linux's
reputation.
-Mike
Date sent: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 15:56:26 +0100
From: Leo <leonardo@dinamicmultimedia.es>
To: redhat-list@redhat.com, redhat-devel-list@redhat.com
Subject: RedHat bugs???
> Hi all,
>
> I've been using redhat since release 4 (using 5.0 now).
> Just recently, I was chatting about linux with an individual on an irc
> channel. Suddenly he started telling me everything I was using on my
> computer (from the window manager, to irc client --that's easy--,
> etc...)... Apparently he got into my computer thanks to a bug in
> redhat's linux distribution (or so he said)... He told me the bug in
> question is in lpd (among others). He also said that, in order to
> protect myself, I should disable the printing service, by commenting out
> the line in /etc/services, but this leaves me without proper printing
> environment (I have to manually run lpd as root every time I send a job
> to print).
> Also, he said redhat's distribution is among the buggiest... said suse
> is the least.
> He gave me a program (called strobe), which scans remote computer's open
> ports, but not the program he used to get into my computer.
>
> Does anybody know if this is true ???
> If it is, it's very scary!!!
>
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Leo Zayas
>
--
Mike Bridge <mike@bridgecanada.com>
System Administrator
Global Sourcing Network
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