Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Flaw Found iIn Ethernet Device Drivers

Posted by Hemos on from the yay-for-security-bugs dept.

Licensed2Hack writes "Security researchers have discovered a serious vulnerability that may be present in many Ethernet device drivers that is causing the devices to broadcast sensitive information over networks. Seems the device driver writers couldn't be bothered with a memset() call. Eweek has their typical (puffy, low on tech details) take on it here. Since they don't specify the OS, I'm assuming these are drivers for Windows." It's actually Linux, *BSD, and Windows.

6 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Not Exactly by starX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Cert advisory says that MS doesn't ship any drivers with this vulnerability. This is a lot different from saying that MS systems are completely uneffected. We're going to have all double check against the actual driver being used by the system (when this list is complete of course) to find out if we are particularly affected by this.

  2. Re:You assume too much by the_mice · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Granted Windows is listed as "Not Vulnerable", but here's the MS statement regarding this issue (from the CERT advisory's vendor listing):
    Microsoft does not ship any drivers that contain the vulnerability. However, we have found samples in our documentation that, when compiled without alteration, could yield a driver that could contain this issue. We have made corrections to the samples in our documentation, and will include tests for this issue in our certification process.
    So the OS itself isn't vulnerable as it's own networking code doesn't handle Ethernet padding, but the OS vendor has in the past provided Windows NIC vendors (and hence driver developers) with documentation leading directly to this vulnerability... Sounds secure to me...
  3. Oh god, lets hype it all up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great. I don't mean to sound like a troll, but @stake is really stretching for publicity here. 46 bytes? Do you realize how small the padding is? Yes, it's enough for a password, but keep in mind, that padding being sent out is transmitted from OLD FRAMES. These items have been transmitted before. Guess what kids? If you observe secure computing practices, such as using a encrypted login method (ssh comes to mind) and you mind your standard p's and q's, this problem should never be a PROBLEM. I am sorry, but as a professional that researches this stuff, I have to rate this vulnerability as a "really really low" and keep plugging on. In a perfect world, we would grab from urandom/random/null but this isn't a perfect world. Lets focus on remote root compromises, remote "system/admin" compromises, and lets also focus on getting IIS away from the industry. These are the REAL problems. Someone wake me up when @stake has a real advisory to give, something excellent that we are used to seeing from them, besides this trivial fluff they are going to over-hype.

    Mod me however you want, I'm a coward to /. but this will be the same position I give the Fortune 500 company I work for. /me wonders if my VP will mod me "troll" or "flamebait" =P

  4. Looks pretty harmless by heikkile · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It is a flaw alright, but I fail to see it as very serious. It is not a remote exploit, nor a local one. It leaks basically random bytes from the memory, without telling where in the memory they come from, and without any way for the attacker to specify where in the memory he wants to read. So, yes, there could be a password in it, but there could as well be a snippet of executable code or binary data, or whatever. It would take a lot of sniffing of these, and a lot of filtering, before anything useful would come out of it.

    I am sure someone will rush to correct me if I am wrong about this.

    --

    In Murphy We Turst

  5. Re:I can read! by fucksl4shd0t · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On top of this, and everybody seems to be ignoring this basic fact, but after you get up to 18 bytes of information out of an ethernet packet, you *still* have to chain enough of these together to be a useful chunk of data. The problem drops significantly when you add more machines to the network, because it gets steadily harder and harder to put them together in order from the same machine. (Yeah, I know, you can use the mac or IP address to chain them together, but ethernet allows out-of-order packet delivery)

    --
    Like what I said? You might like my music
  6. Re:Or maybe Slashdot wont post news unless its ant by Michalson · · Score: 5, Insightful
    While not 100% true I do see truth in that. For anything to get on the front page these days it seems to require at least one of the following:
    • Microsoft is bad, we don't know why, but it is
    • Another article just like it is already on the frontpage
    • The Poster has provided enough FUD about the article to fill a landfill
    • Someone got arrested in the vicinity of a tech company. IT MUST BE A THREAT TO OUR RIGHTS!
    • Crazy, unsupported rumor. Likely about Apple.