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Re: Release update



On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 12:46:54PM +0200, Alexander Schmehl wrote:
> The new sarge install on my workstation (choosed tasks to install:
> »Desktop environment« and »Office environment«), portmap and nfs-common
> (and some other stuff, I sure I won't need, thats the bad thing about
> the tasks).

Thanks for this information.

> An »nmap -sV« shows me this:

¿How about an 'lsof -ni' run in the system (as root)?
Ok. Let's find the culprits.

> PORT    STATE SERVICE  VERSION
> 9/tcp   open  discard?
> 13/tcp  open  daytime

Those two are default in netkit-inetd. IMHO they are not really needed, but 
don't pose a huge risk [1]

> 22/tcp  open  ssh      OpenSSH 3.8p1 (protocol 2.0)

Ssh is 'standard' priority. It is good to have it installed when a 
user only want's a Desktop? Risk could be mitigated if access to it 
was correctly restricted through tcp-wrappers.

> 37/tcp  open  time

That's provided by netkit-inetd. Again, not really useful for a
Desktop-Office environment but doesn't pose much risk [1]

> 111/tcp open  rpcbind  2 (rpc #100000)

That's portmap. Again 'standard' priority. And useless in a Desktop-Office
environment unless you use RPC services (which you don't seem to)

> 113/tcp open  ident    OpenBSD identd

That's probably open because of 'pidentd'. Standard priority, but shouldn't 
be there.

> 515/tcp open  printer  BSD/Linux lpd (access denied)

That's 'lpr', again, standard priority. I would rather have it configured
to _not_ listen on the tcp port, or, at least, access to it should be 
limited through tcp-wrappers. It could be replaced with other printer 
daemons that don't do TCP but are as useful in Desktop-Office environments 
[2]

> 835/tcp open  status   1 (rpc #100024)

That's probably rpc.mountd? (nfs-common, 'standard' priority).

I could make a gross estimate of risk-assesment based on the DSAs we have
published since 1997:

- openssh: 10 DSAs (19981210, 19991215a, 20001118, dsa-025, dsa-027, 
dsa-086, dsa-091, dsa-119, dsa-134 and dsa-382)
- lpr: 4 DSAs (19980828a, 19991030, 20000109 and dsa-267)
- nfs-common: 1 DSA (20000719a)

OpenSSH's bugs are remote root in many cases, lpr's are usually local vulns
(there is one remote buffer overflow) and nfs-common's was a buffer
overflow. Of course, I'm omitting the security vulnerabilities these had
which didn't affect our stable releases (openssh's security bugs would be
higher). 

Based on this info I still advocate for implementing/fixing #62145,
openssh, lpr, portmap and nfs-common all use tcp-wrappers (though libwrap)
Either that or find a way to avoid having openssh/lpr/portmap/nfs-common 
installed in the environment Alexander describes. Only lpr is needed in 
that environment and it still could be replaced with other non-network 
aware printer package or configured to only listen on the loopback 
interface.

Or do we have to be hit by a worm targeted to our stable release in order
to get this done? [3] Can't we learn from past mistakes? [4]

> May I help you in an other way, before I start configuring that machine
> to my needs?

Thanks a lot for the info.

Javier


[1] At least _known_ risk, besides the fact that they can be used to 
fingerprint the system.

[2] Cups? It has been more vulnerable to remote attacks than lpr in the 
past. PDQ was available in stable but is not available any more (why?)
Please send patches if you think you can improve this:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/ch-sec-services.en.html#s5.5

[3] Hint: Red Hat added firewalling configuration in the default 
installation in the next release after the Ramen/Lion worm propagated in 
the default installation of RedHat 6.0-6.2

[4] Hint: The Ramen/Lion worm exploited a number of services available in
the default installation of RedHat 6.0-6.2, namely: CVE-2000-0573
(wu-ftpd), CVE-2000-0666 (rpc.statd) and CVE-2000-0917 (lprng), the worm
appeared (on average) 161 days after the patches for these were available.
The only one we (thank god) don't provide is wu-ftpd, but think 
openssh =~ wu-ftpd 

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