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Remote Exploit Discovered for OpenBSD
An anonymous reader writes "OpenBSD is known for its security policies, and for its boast of "only one remote exploit in over 10 years". Well, make that two, because Core Security has found a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in the OpenBSD kernel. Upgrade your firewalls as soon as possible."
I'm a bit surprised that the summary didn't mention the rather interesting timeline in the Core advisory, which implies an attempted cover up. I don't know all the facts, so I'll let the document speak for itself:
-Fyodor
Insecure.Org
Even the on the Lisp Machines the "kernel" code was implemented with manual memory management. There's a very simple reason for this. How do you implement the memory manager? It's a chicken and egg problem, so the lowest levels always have to do memory management by hand.
Also, it's less efficient to simply use one heap for everything. Instead, an OS kernel written in a language with automatic memory management usually maintains large blocks of memory for the various tasks to work in, like an area for packet construction, an area for I/O buffers, etc. The automatic allocator and GC are told which area to work in, and then create or delete stuff in that area as needed.
So no, it's not generally reasonable to implement the lower levels of any OS with automatic memory management. You're free to try, though.
While 'pablumification' does seem to be a newly made word, the root 'pablum' is a bland children's porridge. The ever-handy Wikipedia has this to say:
..thus, the poster's creation of the word in reference to oversimplification.
_In lower case, the word pablum is often used to describe anything bland, oversimplified and generally unsatisfying, especially a work of literature or speech. This usage is thought to derive from the cereal. Today, the word pablum and the original Latin word pabulum are often used interchangeably. In Canada, pablum remains as a generic reference to any instant baby cereal.
_The phrase 'pablum puking', when used in political speech, is used to describe one who seems to lack the ability to digest simple logic or common sense. For example, someone who holds forth the argument that children should be afforded the freedom to play in traffic could rightly be refered to as a 'pablum puking idiot'.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
...it's roughly 5.67137278 × 10^28 IP's per person
Or, as a recent Ars article put it (much better than I ever could):
I am NaN
When was the last time a remote root exploit was found in the Linux kernel?
See http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-30-1; something like 7 vulnerabilities were found in the kernel's smbfs driver which could be used for remote DoS and potentially for remote root, at least on some configurations (the Linux community decided to fix the bugs instead of waiting for exploit code to appear). There may have been other remote root exploits since then -- I haven't been keeping track.