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USB Autorun Attacks Against Linux
Orome1 writes "Many people think that Linux is immune to the type of Autorun attacks that have plagued Windows systems with malware over the years. However, there have been many advances in the usability of Linux as a desktop OS — including the addition of features that can allow Autorun attacks. This Shmoocon presentation by Jon Larimer from IBM X-Force starts off with a definition of autorun vulnerabilities and some examples from Windows, then jumps straight into the Linux side of things. Larimer explains how attackers can abuse these features to gain access to a live system by using a USB flash drive. He also shows how USB as an exploitation platform can allow for easy bypass of protection mechanisms like ASLR and how these attacks can provide a level of access that other physical attack methods do not." I've attached the video if you are curious. Skip the first 2 minutes if you don't care where the lost and found is.
Autorun as a concept just sucks.
Copying whatever Windows does, warts and all, into Linux, just sucks.
When is this insanity going to end?
Has there really ever been anyone responsible for Linux making claims of "the year of Linux"? Or has it just been some random users that once made a reference?
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Shoot him.
morcego
MS *tried* to fight it (in part) by effectively adding a GUI sudo prompt into Windows Vista. A million people -- including Linux users posting on Slashdot -- immediately flew into fits of nerd rage about how annoying it was to have a GUI sudo prompt. (I never saw an issue with it myself, actually. Seemed no more irritating than going sudo on Linux or OSX's own authentication prompt. Unlike many, I actually really quite liked Vista, although I use OSX most of the time.) MS listened to their users and allowed them to scale it back in Windows 7, creating a million new security holes and causing a million people -- including Linux users posting on Slashdot, although not necessarily the same ones -- to complain about security flaws in Windows.
MS have made many stupid mistakes over their history and not least due to the ancient and creaking XP (and, even worse, the immediately-owned ME) have a history of shit security. Thing is they tried to patch it up in an easy way and people bitched and puled enough that they had to make it less secure again.
That, of course, ignores the other few million security flaws riddling the kernel. I'm just talking about the UAC here.
Linux still has the antiquated "user, group, everyone" security model from the 1970s. By now, we know that outside data can't be given all the privileges of the user. But Linux's legacy security model is so deeply embedded in the UNIX/Linux world that it's almost impossible to get beyond that.
Yes, there's SELinux. But there isn't a whole distribution with a full range of applications which can run under a mandatory security model.
Almost every comment here is concentrating on "Autorun" i.e. automatic execution of scripts/executables on media and ignoring the main focus of the talk, which is about exploiting bugs in the way the file-manager handles previews of image, PDF, DVI files etc. situated on the media. More generally he talks about the possibilities of exploiting vulnerabilities in every layer involved when automatically handling inserted media, from device discovery, device drivers, file-system drivers, up to and including the file-manager.
Unless we're all conflating "autorun" with "automount & show the media in a file-manager" now?