Slashdot Mirror
Package Managers As Achilles Heel
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the University of Arizona have released a study that takes a look at the security of ten popular package managers. They were able to show all ten were vulnerable to attacks from a mirror or man-in-the-middle that allow an attacker to (along with other things) crash the system or obtain root access. Furthermore, the researchers created a fictitious administrator and company name and were able to lease a server and get it listed as an official mirror for all the distributions they tried (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and OpenSUSE). This raised the question: What keeps you up at night, the thought of attacks on your package manager or previously discussed and patched vulnerability in DNS?" justin samuel (one of the Arizona researchers) also points out a synopsis on CERT's blog.
How does compiling from source help? Trojans can be introduced in source code just as easily as in binaries.
Unfortunately it's not nearly as easy to type: ... ... x20
wget http://blahblah/dep1.tar.gz
wget http://foobar/dep2.tar.gz (404 Sigh)
wget http://woobar/dep2.tar.gz
wget ftp://wowowow/dep2.1.tar.gz
Followed by:
tar -zxvf files.tgz x 20
THEN followed by: ./configure && make && make install x20 IN THE RIGHT ORDER
times
Plus however long it takes you to debug the eventual compile problems because one of those obscure libraries that only one program uses was installed earlier with the wrong version.
All said and done, I'd rather take my chances with package managers, thanks.
If you are downloading from a mirror, someone could apply similar methods to insert malicious code in your version of the source. And checking all of the source code is no trivial matter, especially if you are looking for an intentionally obscure bit of code.
Also, you have to trust your compiler, which you *had* to get from someone else. Your compiler may be inserting malicious code.
This doesn't really make it more secure.
That's the kind of simplistic black-and-white view of security that is responsible for so many security problems.
Of course it makes it more secure if I verify against multiple sites and over SSL: it protects against many of the attacks described in that paper, so it will be harder for an attacker to mount a successful attack.
The short answer : yes
The longer answer : every OS is vulnerable one way or another. The difference lies mostly in the response and the response time by the vendors.
Linux : take the debian ssh disaster a few month ago as example. I read about it at Google News, head over here to check how the linux bashing was coming along, and while I was reading, the "update available" icon appeared. A few minutes later and the vulnerability was no more. .. people who actually CAN fix this kind of problems, not your average /. reader)
Admitedly, it took a *VERY* long time to find out about the problem in the first place, but the response time from then on was very short, and the update contained concise information about the whole mess.
Today's vulnerability will probably take a bit longer to be fixed, as it requires some primordial changes in the way packet manager work to be fixed. But I'm rather sure people are already looking for a solution (you know
Apple Mac : when Apple admits that there is a vulnerability in their products, they take their dear sweet time to fix it. As a matter of fact, Apple just released a security fix for Apple TV, covering vulnerabilities dating back to, at least, January 2008 (at which time it was fixed for OSX, but NOT for Apple TV). I can't comment on how detailed the security fixes are, as I don't own apple products
Microsoft : the Zero Day initiative still lists 12 issues concerning Apple product, classified as "high severity", but the oldest item is a Microsoft vulnerability dating from September 2006 (more or less quoted verbatim from the iWire article I'll link to a bit later). Microsoft updates are particularly obscure in their descriptions, and, if I remember correctly, they are sometimes even applied without asking the user first, and have a bad habbit of breaking other stuff.
So, is Linux 100% secure? No, and it will never be. But at least the devs react in a timely manner, and they don't just install something without telling you what it is or that they are patching at all. Therefore it is better secured than Apple and Microsoft products whose vulnerabilities are often left open, for the sake of obscurity I suppose.
"Superiority" is a highly subjective term, so I won't even start to thread on this subject. It is for me, but your mileage might vary
Apple TV fix article
Zero Day Initiative upcoming advisories
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
> One long term solution would be to sign package metadata and serve
> it only from one central location, over https/sftp.
Even that won't help. The authors got so caught up in the complex exploiting they didn't notice the BIG implication of their work. The problem can't be fixed with tech, crypto or anything but https connects to known to be trusted mirror operators.
Follow along as I demonstrate. Spamgang wants zombies so they install a massive mirror farm for all of the major distros. They run it perfectly, fully updated with upstream as fast as their phat pipe can get it, perfectly signed metadata, packages and everything offered by http or https. Then they wait.
Sooner or later another remote root bug, in openssh for example, will hit and they are ready. Thousands of machines either automatically connect or their owners see the story here on /. and hit the update button. They download that signed, correct metadata and sure enough their machines realize they need that new openssh package and ask the mirror for it. And are 0wned a few milliseconds later.
Because in the act of requesting the package all those machines just told the spamgang that a specific IP is a) running openssh, b) it is the vulnerable version and c) that host is currently connected to the network and very likely has the vulnerable software running. So in the time it takes the updated package to transfer, unpack and install they have ample time to get in and install a rootkit. The beauty is that the victim will patch the hole and thus prevent anyone else from getting the zombie.
Wait a random time before beginning to use the new zombies to help prevent people from getting wise to what is happening and the spamgang could likely get away with it for years.
Democrat delenda est
No need for anything as complicated as verifying packages accross several source :
most modern package managers use key-signing on package.
You can't setup a bogus repository and start serving malware to unaware users - those packages will fail the key check.
For that to work, the crackers would also have to find a way to inject their own keys into the ISO of the distribution, and they'll have to find a way doing it that still pass the checksum of the peer-2-peer client with which the users downloaded the ISO.
That might be possible with older p2p protocols relying on older weak hash, like eDonkey2k whose MD4 has known collisions, or even older protocols lacking checksums. (Some companies working for the media corporation back then used such possibility to pose as peer on the network and poisoning it by injecting bogus packets).
But distribution currently rely on bittorrent which use SHA-1 hash and it's (currently) much harder to find a way to inject tampered data and have the resulting file still pass the checks.
Another solution would be to trick the users into accepting a new set of keys to get onto the fake repository. For this, this repository will have to pose not as a mirror (as proposed in the TFA) but as an additional 3rd party repository hold functionalities not available in the original source (this is something that would benefit from the harsh imaginary-properties laws as most distro can't provide packages processing some media, and users have to rely on 3rd party repositories for this).
Besides, the summary is misleading. They didn't actually setup a bogus mirror that served maliciously crafted files, or otherwise injected malware (that would be impossible given the signatures).
They simply setup a mirror, that wasn't up to date on purpose, potentially exposing computer to exploit due to only older versions of software being updated.
As actual legit mirror may lag behind the release, it is nevertheless preferable to always add the original repositories to the list of source : thus get the files from the mirror if available there, or straight from the original website if not replicated everywhere.
This work around is even useful when there's no malicious intent.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As far as I can tell, Debian is not vulnerable in its default install mode.
a - Debian will never automatically downgrade a package.
b - Security problems (as opposed to mere changes) get published in the Debian security repository.
c - The Debian installer automatically adds the debian security mirror to the end of your sources file.
So, you can create a mirror, easily inject it into the list of official Debian mirrors, and freeze the packages offered on it. You can do all that easily. It won't help you. If you take the CERT example, of the vulnerable openssl package, the fix was pushed through the security repository, and that is added by default to all new Debian installations. The attack would fail.
Furthermore, even if your mirror offered a security mirror as well, I, personally, always keep the Debian source as well, lower in the list. This way, if the local security mirror is up to date, I take stuff from there. If it's not, I take it from the Debian server. This means that even if you deviate from the default behavior, you can still be not vulnerable.
Shachar