Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 3 Jun 1997 21:36:17 -0400 | From | "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <> | Subject | Re: Non-Executable Stack Patch |
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Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 02:50:04 +0300 From: Andi Gutmans <andi@vipe.technion.ac.il>
Well with a non-executable stack most security conscious system administrators will sleep better :) I can guarantee that. (Not too much better as holes always exist but quite a lot).
The advantage of the patch is that it will stop the current set of attacks that take the form of "find buffer overrun in a program", followed by "apply standard toolkit to exploit buffer overrun by putting executable code on the stack".
The disadvantage of the patch is that after we apply, within a few months we will see a new toolkit of the form "corrupt the stack to point the return address into someplace entertaining in libc --- like right before an an execl call in the implementation of popen()."
The danger is people thinking that with this patch, they don't need to worry about finding and fixing buffer overrun bugs in their code....
- Ted
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