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If You Hack NBC, You Don't Get to Meet Tom Brokaw
subgeek writes "Security Focus Online is carrying this story about the spot that Adrian Lamo almost had on the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. NBC changed their mind after they realized the possible legal implications of filming someone hack corporate systems. NBC also seemed a bit touchy that Lamo had gotten into their system so handily. According to the article, it took him about five minutes and one guessed password to get inside NBC's intranet from a computer at a Kinko's. Lamo's comment: "It was a very full service system.""
The "Dumass" you're referring to is either the "Thick-Headed" commercial for A&W Root Beer, or from The Shawshank Redemption tring to pronounce Alexandre Dumas.
Not that I'm anal or anything.
"It has come to my attention that NBC sucks." His voice cracks when he says, "sucks".
Interesting? Please.
This is a verbatim repost of an old troll--which, I might add, was shot down point for point for point.
"No root user" is NOT the same thing as "always running as root".
404 Error:
The entire premise of "secure Mac OS" web servers is based on two factors:
It would thus be accurate to say "The Mac OS web server may be a good choice if you are clueless, do not know how to administer secure servers, and want to run an OS that is now officially obsolete."
If MacOS is so great, why does Apple use Solaris?
Akamai. Apple's web site is distributed. When you connect to apple.com, you're actually getting www.apple.com.akadns.net, which runs on Solaris.
2> No Root user. All mac developers know their code is always running at root. Nothing is higher (except undocumented microkernel stufff where you pass Gary Davidians birthday into certain registers and make a special call). By always being root there is no false sense of security, and programming is done carefully.
Perhaps this is a philosophical nitpick on my part, but by extension shouldn't this mean that the vast majority of Windows programs should be incredibly secure? Prior to NT, all Windows developers were guaranteed that their code would be running as 'root'. That's a lot of developer-time spent in a world where everything is root. And yet, somehow, Windows still seems to have its share of security problems.
I'm not saying that Macs are as insecure as Windows boxes, just that I'm having trouble following the idea that "always being root" somehow makes programmers more security-conscious.
3> Pascal strings. ANSI C Strings are the number one way people exploit Linux and Wintel boxes. The mac avoids C strings historically in most of all of its OS. In fact even its roms originally used Pascal strings. As you know pascal strings are faster than C (because they have the length delimiter in the front and do not have to endlessly hunt for NULL), but the side effect is less buffer exploits. Individual 3rd party products may use C stings and bind to ANSI libraries, but many do not.
A buffer overflow is a buffer overflow is a buffer overflow.
If you don't check that your destination buffer is big enough to hold the contents of your source buffer, then your code becomes a bug in search of an exploit. Doesn't matter if the length is stored at the beginning, doesn't matter if you count until you find a NUL. If you copy from A to B and sizeof(B) < sizeof(A), you're just looking for trouble.
Yes, ladies and gents, sometimes size does matter...
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
I honestly think, knowing many of them, that most Mac OS programmers don't give a shit about security. They just want a program that works. Few of them seem to realize that not all data is to be trusted. (How many times have you dragged a file into your favorite application and had the whole system crash? That's proof.) I've found that UNIX programmers tend to be most aware of this.Enjoy your 255-charcter limit. Or the fact that a 1-character string still takes 256 bytes. (And by the way.. Many exploitable programs do in fact have length arguments/members. They only go so far; it's when the human programmer disobeys/disregards them that's the problem.)I don't understand this part.
void foo( int x ) {
char buf[256];
}
On i386, the stack for this function would look like this:
ebp-4: return addess
ebp: old stack pointer
ebp+4: buf
ebp+260: esp (new stack pointer)
In other words, the return address is BEHIND any local variables.
How often are strings terminated on the left rather than the right? I often do loops backwards, but it would never go to the left of the original buffer...
On the other hand, you could do this...
void foo( char *buf, void *c ) {
memcpy( buf+256, &c, sizeof(c) );
}
void bar() {
char buf[256];
foo( buf, shellcode );
}
And that could be bad... But how often is this actually possible? Most programmers are smarter than this.
Reminds me of the great SNL skit with Nicholas Cage:
:) (Cage made every name that his wife suggested into a tease or a taunt to see if it would be appropriate.)
"The name is Dumass, Dumass!"
That's a rootbeer commercial.
Nicholas Cage's name was "Asswipe," and the line was "Excuse me, that's pronounced Os-wee-pay!"
Sorry I remembered that skit recently when trying to think up a name for my unborn child.