Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2002/08/12/sun_library_bug_affects_nix/

Sun library bug affects *Nix and Kerberos

Potentially deeply unpleasant

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 12th August 2002 20:29 GMT

Administrators are urged to review the impact of a potentially serious vulnerability affecting many Linux and Unix distributions.

Security clearing house CERT last week warned that integer overflow involving Sun Microsystems XDR library (also used by many other vendors in their own implementations) can lead to a variety of attacks.

The XDR (external data representation) libraries are used to provide platform-independent methods for sending data from one system process to another, typically over a network connection.

Because SunRPC-derived XDR libraries are used by a many vendors in a variety of applications, this defect may result in many different security problems.

Exploiting this vulnerability will lead to denial of service, execution of arbitrary code, or the disclosure of sensitive information.

The flaw also affects the popular Kerberos authentication software.

More details on the issue and link to vendor patches to address the problem are available here. ®