Bash To Require Further Patching, As More Shellshock Holes Found

Bismillah writes Google security researcher Michael 'lcamtuf' Zalewski says he's discovered a new remote code execution vulnerability in the Bash parser (CVE-2014-6278) that is essentially equivalent to the original Shellshock bug, and trival to exploit. "The first one likely permits remote code execution, but the attack would require a degree of expertise to carry out," Zalewski said. "The second one is essentially equivalent to the original flaw, trivially allowing remote code execution even on systems that deployed the fix for the initial bug," he added.

Comments

Is the bash parser a lost cause?

[benjymouse]

Seems to me that there are multiple indications that the parser is quirky, ad-hoc and error-prone. Parser construction is an old discipline. Was the bash parser created by people without the proper training, and has later maintenance ignored code because it was too weird?

Re:Soon to be patched

[Anonymous Coward]

You thought you could run a totally free hobbyist OS and have it be as secure as one done by paid professionals?

Be glad its there for you to use at all. People donate their time and energy to it. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

The downside of the Unix Way

[JDG1980]

I know I'll get flamed for saying this, but it seems to me that the Shellshock bug represents a weakness in the Unix philosophy. On Windows, if a similar issue happened with cmd.exe or PowerShell, it would have only a limited effect, because the Windows shell is basically just an administration tool, and no one in their right mind would use it to pass untrusted input of any sort. In contrast, "the Unix way" encourages piping of shell commands to other shell commands, and the use of shelling out as a substitute for proper APIs. To me as a Windows power user, the idea that a basic feature like DHCP is using a shell script behind the scenes seems crazy. The better way to write re-usable code is to do the C/C++ API first, then build both the command line and GUI tools on top of that API. "The Unix way" is a clumsy hack in comparison – and it leaves the shell as a security-critical single point of failure.

Another way to think of it is that Linux is now dealing with an issue that Windows has been struggling with for over a decade: how to fix inherently insecure design decisions without breaking compatibility with a million different legacy applications in the process. Maybe they'll need to implement the equivalent of "UAC" whenever a program tries to shell out?