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FSF FTP Site Cracked, Looking for MD5 Sums
landley writes "The Free Software Foundation's FTP site at ftp.gnu.org has been "compromised", and they don't seem to have full backups. They've yanked a bunch of recent packages (and their whole alpha.gnu.org ftp site), and when I asked about it they responded 'Our FTP server was compromised, yes. We are beginning to find good MD5sums for files which have not yet been restored, and they will be available again Real Soon Now. If you can provide MD5sums for any of the files listed in MISSING-FILES, it would be very much appreciated.' " Update the FSF has
a statement
on the FTP site explaining the matter.
Sure, I've got the "correct" MD5s right here. You trust me, don't you?
Did you know that some files are just about impossible to get anywhere else?
Are there no mirrors of this site?
http://threetechguys.info Come, discuss Technology. Got a technology question? Come ask!
I know, I clicked on the link :)
Hmm odd...one day they speak of taking sco support out of gcc, the next their ftp server gets comprised, interesting.
"Real men don't use backups, they post their stuff on a public ftp server and let the rest of the world make copies." - Linus Torvalds
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
But do to some sort of wierd computer problem my machine keeps on restarting...
I will get around to fixing it sometime next week.
It's all good.
Taking a brief glance over my FreeBSD server, all of the entries in the Ports tree have the MD5SUMs in the "files" file. The Ports tree includes many many FSF software package installs.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Hate it when that happends...
:D
Who wants to sell off some MD5 checksums off ebay? Let's make a few dallors!
This space is not for rent.
the list goes on abd on and...
now, grep for 'vi' : nothing, nada, null.
Of course, what do you think? This is a conspiracy orchestrated by VI lovers, to wipe out EMACS from the face of earth!
Crackers exploited this vunerability, there was even a patch available!!
There is no god
if you understand the headline
FSF FTP Site Cracked, Looking for MD5 Sums
You just might be a geek.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Okay, this kind of shit makes me want to start throwing bricks. Cracking the GNU FTP server? Is nothing sacred anymore? I feel like someone burned down a church.
They've done so much for humanity and some utter twit decides to compensate for his bad childhood by taking their server down.
*goes off to dock another point from his faith in humanity*
"Honey, it's not working out; I think we should make our relationship open-source."
Unbelievable. And I'm supposed to trust their methods and products with my enterprise?
Good God. The fact you can post that comment...no. You're just too much of an unthinking hero-worshipping idiot for me to finish. Yes, it was an inside job or a weak password. Anything except a vulnerability. Yes.
Having just read the above, let me add: Let a thousand jokes be posted!
Dawn of the Dead
The compromise was probably a weak password or an inside job.
Which is why syslog should be on another secure computer, and dumped to paper in a locked room for high-security sites.
It won't help the recovery, but helps pinpoint the intrusion
We would already be flooded with posts about how if this were a Microsoft server we would already be flooded with posts bashing Microsoft and talking about....oh, right, my bad.
Then next time you will catch the joke...
It's all good.
Why does the FSF not use a OpenPGP signature on the files and md5sum lists in their archives? Unless the key is kept on the same (compromised) host, then it becomes easy to figure out what files are valid, and what isn't.
a sed-4.0.7.tar.gz
BTW, here is my contribution:
> md5sum sed-4.0.7.tar.gz
005738e7f97bd77d95b6907156c8202
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Or maybe, JUST FUCKING MAYBE , Linux isn't some sort of magical bug free OS where every buffer is checked, every race condition averted, and every service that runs on it is guaranteed bug free.
;)
That would be OpenBSD.
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
$ md5sum complete-gnu.tgzf complete-gnu.tgz
deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbee
- Peter Brodersen; professional nerd
Hmmm. You mention Apache. This is an FTP server. What kind of tool runs an FTP server using web server software? So far as we know (given that there are no details of how the server compromise was carried out), this says nothing about the security of a particular FTP server software, Apache, GNU/Linux, or any other Free Software package.
:)
As is the case with most installations of MS Windows, other operating systems and pretty much any user level software, the security of the system is only as strong as the weakest link: usually that's the user (and the sysadmin falls into that group). Bad passwords, bad security policies, and lax attention to security patching affect every system because every system has users.
Why might Free Software Zealots be laughing when MS products are demonstrated to be insecure? Because people have paid MS billions of dollars for that software. MS has billions of dollars in the bank. You'd think a company with those kinds of resources could hire a few security experts-- or even a few thousand-- and have them really work out the bugs. Free Software, on the other hand, is largely produced as charity, costs little or nothing to obtain, and at least when the code is demonstrably insecure, you (the user) have both the means and the right to fix it. Not so with the expensive binaries you get from Redmond.
Oh, thanks for trolling. I assume this response is exactly what you were hoping for.
I do not have a signature
...that the cream of IT people would do regular revolving backups, securing sessions and have a standalone staging enviroment for all their stuff should the connected setup get compromised. Especially files which are distributed into the entire world to run on bazillions of computers once released. That's all a big fat hairy bad-ass no-brainer.
Sorry, gnu.org team, no icecream tonight.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well, it will be as soon as they can remember the key combination for 'hack into VI web site' is. Now I know it's in here somewhere - is it M-~ h C-V...?
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
No one's ever claimed Linux is 100% secure.
However, the next time a virus is released that takes down 90% of Linux installs, and toasts most of the internet, let me know. Until then, your point isn't exactly valid.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
No. The real $64,000 question is why didn't they have reliable backups and a disaster recovery plan
and patched August 31, 2003
I knew the open source community worked fast but that's just scary.
I'll bet that 90% (or more) of all break-ins are the result of problems that could have been patched. Yeah, it sucks that this happened to GNU, but they're only human. Last I heard, they only have one system administrator to handle all of their machines, including Savannah. I can understand that this happens from time to time. GNU has to be a relatively high profile target (such as for disgruntled BSD h4x0rs and so on) so cut them some slack. If you patch 40 machines 99.9% of the time, nobody remembers that, what they remember is that you got cracked on one tiny detail you missed.
:)
At least they yanked the programs until they could verify that they were correct. That really was the only thing they could do. The lesson to take from this is that with computer security and auditing, nothing less than absolute perfection is necessary. And so long as human beings are doing the admin work, absolute perfection just isn't realistic.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
leaving out the profanities, this isn't flamebait
Duhhh. "If it wasn't for the flames, this wouldn't be a flame."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
You mean the $65,536...
How about a spell checker for slashdot, or even more impressive, a spell checker for strings in C-Code? Use lint! -DG
Also nicely demonstrates the pointlessness (and stupidity) of serving out your MD5sums from the same machine.
Turn that pee-cee thing off and go to bed RIGHT NOW!
/pull covers over head and laptop/
Yes mom....
Though don't bother if it only toasts about 50% of Windows installs and bring down only a significant portion of the internet. That's becoming too common place.
Wouldn't that be "GNPisNotthePassword"?
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
While I agree with the premise of the post, this is sort of thing that would get flamed to hell and back if the thread dealt with a Microsoft security breach (case in point, see yesterday's discussion about the RPC worm). According to that thread, being overworked, underpaid, or anything else is not an excuse for having an unpatched machine.
Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. --Ludwig Wittgenstein
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, diff's, etc.) on ftp.gnu.org with a known good data. The file, .asc, contains a list of files
... REASON]
Hash: SHA1
To the Free Software Community:
Summary
* gnuftp, the FTP server for the GNU project was root compromised.
* After substantial investigation, we don't believe that any GNU
source has been compromised.
* To be extra-careful, we are verifying known, trusted secure
checksums of all files before putting them back on the FTP site.
Events Concerning Cracking of Gnuftp
A root compromise and a Trojan horse were discovered on gnuftp.gnu.org,
the FTP server of the GNU project. The machine appears to have been
cracked in March 2003, but we only very recently discovered the crack.
The modus operandi of the cracker shows that (s)he was interested
primarily in using gnuftp to collect passwords and as a launching point to
attack other machines. It appears that the machine was cracked using a
ptrace exploit immediately after the exploit was posted on bugtraq.
(For the ptrace bug, an root-shell exploit available on 17 March 2003, and
a working fix was not available on linux-kernel until the following week.
Evidence found on the machine indicates that were cracked during that
week.)
Given the nature of the compromise and the length of time the machine was
compromised, we have spent the last few weeks verifying the integrity of
the GNU source code stored on gnuftp. Most of this work is done, and the
remaining work is primarily for files that were uploaded since early 2003,
as our backups from that period could also theoretically be compromised.
Historical Integrity Checks
We have compared the md5sum of each source code file (such as
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/before-2003-08-01.md5sums
in the format:
MD5SUM FILE [REASON,
The REASONs are a list of reasons why we believe that md5sum is good for
that file. The file as a whole is GPG-signed.
Remaining Files
The files that have not been checked are listed in the root directory as
"MISSING-FILES". We are in the process of asking GNU maintainers for
trusted secure checksums of those files before we put them in place.
We have lots of evidence now to believe that no source has been
compromised -- including the MO of the cracker, the fact that every file
we've checked so far isn't compromised, and that searches for standard
source trojans turned up nothing.
However, we don't want to put files up until we've had a known good source
confirm that the checksums are correct.
Alpha FTP Site
The Alpha FTP site at ftp://alpha.gnu.org/ has been a lower priority for
us, but we plan to follow the same procedure there.
- --
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director
Free Software Foundation | Phone: +1-617-542-5942
59 Temple Place, Suite 330 | Fax: +1-617-542-2652
Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA | Web: http://www.gnu.org
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQE/OnYb53XjJNtBs4cRAqplAJ95PHJhIwRiwjKBqSIx ZH SVlTOtxACgyouK
QAfYhiLJcwPHio6fsk+s2uY=
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This was modded as informative why? This is what it says on the FSF web site:
A root compromise and a Trojan horse were discovered on gnuftp.gnu.org,
the FTP server of the GNU project. The machine appears to have been
cracked in March 2003, but we only very recently discovered the crack.
The modus operandi of the cracker shows that (s)he was interested
primarily in using gnuftp to collect passwords and as a launching point to
attack other machines. It appears that the machine was cracked using a
ptrace exploit immediately after the exploit was posted on bugtraq.
(For the ptrace bug, an root-shell exploit available on 17 March 2003, and
a working fix was not available on linux-kernel until the following week.
Evidence found on the machine indicates that were cracked during that
week.)
Given the nature of the compromise and the length of time the machine was
compromised, we have spent the last few weeks verifying the integrity of
the GNU source code stored on gnuftp. Most of this work is done, and the
remaining work is primarily for files that were uploaded since early 2003,
as our backups from that period could also theoretically be compromised.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
There are backups from before the crack.
If you want to give FSF $64,000, we could hire someone to implement a better plan. But we're not made of money.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Last time I checked, it was wu_ftpd that had the vulnerability, not Linux. It doesn't matter if you were running it on Cygwin, *BSD, HURD, or Linux. Geesh. Stop calling everything OS Linux, because it isn't.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
[snip]
(For the ptrace bug, an root-shell exploit available on 17 March 2003, and a working fix was not available on linux-kernel until the following week. Evidence found on the machine indicates that were cracked during that week.)
Given the nature of the compromise and the length of time the machine was compromised, we have spent the last few weeks verifying the integrity of the GNU source code stored on gnuftp. Most of this work is done, and the remaining work is primarily for files that were uploaded since early 2003, as our backups from that period could also theoretically be compromised.
(emphasis added). So in other words, they were cracked in the brief space between the exploit post and the patch, and didn't find it right away. Now, they are carefully vetting all their backups from that period to remove any possibility that a compromised backup could be redistributed.
So, to answer your poorly-researched questions:
Which part of this would you not consider a disaster recovery plan?
ftp as a protocol is far simpler to implement than ssh2 for example, so if you have no authentication to do, use ftp.
/much/ better. its very simple and designed from scratch to be secure above all else. afaik it has never had a security bug found, and I would say is as close to secure as it is possible to be.
Using ssl is good if you have eg. passwords to hide, but other than that it just introduces complexity. more complexity tends to mean more possibility for bugs, which means more possible exploits.
However, don't use bloated, over-complicated stuff like wuftpd etc. something like vsftpd is
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I'll sick my cat on them....
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
They do have more than one sysadmin, but none of them are full-time, I believe.
There are also some "interesting" schools of thought regarding security over in gnu.org land, and I'm sure there's tension between them as well. For example, savannah has to have some level of security, but their shell machine (not savannha) has almost zero "sysadmin-added" security: important configuration files are world-writable[*], because RMS doesn't believe in restricting individual actions of users on that machine. The only security is what's provided by the default installation, minus the world-writabilities.
So it should come as no suprise that the shell machine has been compromised multiple times. All from local users exploiting holes. The most recent was done in April, but they didn't find out about it until a few weeks ago. They're still recreating accounts.
I don't know about the ftp machine; I assume it's neither the same system as savannah nor the shell box. But it wouldn't surprise me to find the same situation: some important people gnu.org don't believe in locking down machines, some important people do, but (gripping hand) it almost doesn't matter because none of them have the time to do so.
(If you wonder why the GCC manuals, web pages, etc, on {savannha,www,ftp}.gnu.org are occasionally out of date, it's because gcc.gnu.org (the master) is not admin'd by the same group. Events like this are why it's not admin'd by the same group.)
[*] Backups are done by having little Emacs hooks in comments in the files. When you edit the file -- and of COURSE you're using GNU/FSF Emacs, not XEmacs or any other editor in the world, cuz it's a gnu.org machine -- Emacs knows to make backup copies. I have no idea whether real backups are done, or how.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
They shouldn't be.
If a bug in IIS causes a remote exploit then that's a bug in IIS, and that's it. Now, if there's a bug in the Windows TCP/IP stack, networking components, some kernel call, etc, which causes an exploit then that *is* a bug in Windows.
A bug in wu-ftpd doesn't just affect Linux. It will also affect the other supported platforms: BSD/OS 1.1, and 3.1, FreeBSD 2.2.6, SCO OpenServer 5.x, SCO UnixWare 2.1, Solaris 2.4, 2.5.1 and 2.6, Sun Sparc Platforms, Solaris 2.6, Solaris 2.5.1, SunOS 4.1.4
The only real security vulnerabilities in Linux are the ones that affect only the kernel and Linux specific tools. Everything else is just a vulnerability in some other program.
The whole idea of a mirror is that it actually mirrors what is on another site. If they've been rooted since March 2003, then it is somewhat unlikely that the www.mirror.ac.uk is actually going to have files any different than FSF.
Unless of course, the mirror hasn't been updated since sometime in mid-March.
It's very easy to point out other people's "mistakes" like this, but I wonder how many people actually take all these various precautions that they're so quick to accuse others of not implementing?
The fools! They forgot to install a firewall!
The fools! They didn't purge all the old user accounts!
The fools! They didn't install the latest security patch! On all the boxes in the office!
The fools! They didn't require 10 character passwords, to be changed every 15 days!
The fools! They didn't update their virus definition files! Within the last 24 hours!
The fools! They didn't make triple-redundant off site backups!
The fools! They didn't have a plan C!
The fools! They don't know where their towel is!
Now granted, if you're being paid the big bucks to think about nothing but information security all day then all of these things should probably cross your mind... but I would be willing to bet that most people who are so quick and proud to show off their shiny, impenetrable suit of dragon scales have a soft vulnerable spot on their bellies.
Neither the OP _nor_ the moderator think it important to note in front-page post that the box was compromised in _March_ 2003? Jeez, is this /. or -.?
Must-not-watch TV!
Mirrors as a backup methodolgy have at least one fatal flaw which has been clearly exposed by this incident:
A mirror is a random (whenever the mirror was made) point in time back up. There is no assurance that at any given point in time in the future that a mirror is available in a particular point in time in the past. As a result, the answer to the question "do we have a backup" resolves to "maybe". Generally this sort of answer makes people squirm.
In this particular situation the problem is exacerbate by the fact that every release from march until NOW needs to reaquired from it's source becuase after march 2003 - the source repository and it's mirrors can no longer be considered safe.
Indeed, a very difficult situation to be in.
In order to answer Yes to the point in time question one must invest considerable cash in hardware and software to provide such backups.
Yeesh guys, go easy on these people. They bust their asses every day for us. Their GPL enforcement queue is usually about 50 cases deep. They're on the phones and on capital hill every day educating and lobbying industry groups and politicians. Say what you will about the GPL, you don't even have to like it or agree with it and perhaps you even think RMS is a narrow minded prick (for the most part RMS isn't even involved in the day to day operations at the fsf). They are making life easier for all of us.
Rather than boast about all of the work they do, they quietly work behind the scenes just so you can play Monday morning quarterback. They have one fulltime systems administrator who is *INCREDIBLY* overworked. They are doing everything they can to keep the boat together. Last year they were over $315,000 in the red. Thanks to the FSF associate program and some skillful fundraising they're back in the black.
Want to help? Go get your FSF associate membership. It's not that expensive and it goes a long way towards helping to protect your freedoms.
Incidentally, this is also old news. They had MD5 sums verified, and the servers were patched up and back online almost two full weeks ago. None of the software was trojaned.
Who am I? Just another hacker who bothered to pay for an associate membership (#1142)...
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
It was fixed months ago. It was the local root ptract exploit.
The only reason they got cracked was because they allowed local shell accounts, and due to questionable reporting practices, an exploit was released before linux kernel people had a chance to fix it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Well, I must say that I've never met Mustafa at work... the people who run the UK Mirror Service are, however, there for all to see on the UKMS Crew Page
In all seriousness, you have until some time tonight (on BST, which is UTC+1) before we should be fully synced, including any files that have been pulled, with the source site. There are some exceptions, but I don't think they will apply in this case. And if any files were compromised, they are compromised on our servers as well.
WARNING: SHAMELESS PLUG: If you are a fan of the Mirror Service, or even just a user, please note the message on our homepage, as we are about to be able to serve even more users, at higher speeds.