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Huge Number Of Sites Imperiled By Critical Image-Processing Vulnerability (arstechnica.com)

Dan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica: A large number of websites are vulnerable to a simple attack that allows hackers to execute malicious code hidden inside booby-trapped images. The vulnerability resides in ImageMagick, a widely used image-processing library that's supported by PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, Python, and about a dozen other languages. Many social media and blogging sites, as well as a large number of content management systems, directly or indirectly rely on ImageMagick-based processing so they can resize images uploaded by end users. According to developer and security researcher Ryan Huber, ImageMagick suffers from a vulnerability that allows malformed images to force a Web server to execute code of an attacker's choosing. Websites that use ImageMagick and allow users to upload images are at risk of attacks that could completely compromise their security. "The exploit is trivial, so we expect it to be available within hours of this post," Huber wrote in a blog post. He went on to say: "We have collectively determined that these vulnerabilities are available to individuals other than the person(s) who discovered them. An unknowable number of people having access to these vulnerabilities makes this a critical issue for everyone using this software."

2 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Fire, fire, fire, pants on fire! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Suggestion: read the article and details, before making assumptions. Because if you did, you would have see that that was done. A patch was created but apparently not complete. They also include two mitigation 'patches' (config) in the disclosure. Considering the seriousness of this exploit (even I could understand it - which makes it beyond trivial) the more attention this gets, the better.

    From https://imagetragick.com/

            April, 21 2016 - file read vulnerability report for one of My.Com services from https://hackerone.com/stewie received by Mail.Ru Security Team. Issue is reportedly known to ImageMagic team.
            April, 21 2016 - file read vulnerability patched by My.Com development team
            April, 28 2016 - code execution vulnerability in ImageMagick was found by Nikolay Ermishkin from Mail.Ru Security Team while researching original report
            April, 30 2016 - code execution vulnerability reported to ImageMagick development team
            April, 30 2016 - code execution vulnerability fixed by ImageMagick (incomplete fix)
            April, 30 2016 - fixed ImageMagic version 6.9.3-9 published (incomplete fix)
            May, 1 2016 - ImageMagic informed of the fix bypass
            May, 2 2016 - limited disclosure to 'distros' mailing list
            May, 3 2016 - public disclosure at https://imagetragick.com/

  2. An intermediate fix by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 5, Informative

    Update your /etc/ImageMagick/policy.xml file so that it contains this (taken from http://imagetragick.com ) and restart corresponding daemons:

    <policymap>
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="EPHEMERAL" />
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="URL" />
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="HTTPS" />
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="MVG" />
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="MSL" />
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="TEXT" />
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="SHOW" />
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="WIN" />
      <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PLT" />
    </policymap>

    You're safe now. The full fix is still being worked out.