Critical Flaw Found In Backtrack Linux

chicksdaddy writes "Threatpost is reporting on a critical security flaw in the latest version of Backtrack Linux, a popular distribution that is used by security professionals for penetration testing. The previously undiscovered privilege escalation hole was discovered by a student taking part in an InfoSec Institute Ethical Hacking class, according to the post on the group's Web site. 'The student in our ethical hacking class that found the 0day was using backtrack and decided to fuzz the program, as well as look through the source code,' wrote Jack Koziol, the Security Program Manager at the InfoSec Institute. 'He found that he could overwrite config settings and gain a root shell.' An unofficial patch is available from InfoSec Institute. Koziol said that an official patch is being tested now and is expected shortly."

Comments

Re:Usually you run as root

[YrWrstNtmr]

I don't see what the issue is.

The issue is, that one would expect a distro specifically built for security and penetration testing would not have a discoverable security flaw. No matter how obscure.
It might make one wonder what else has been missed?