Re: [WinMac] OS X vs Win2000?

From: Bruce Johnson (johnson[at]Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU)
Date: Fri Jul 07 2000 - 16:37:12 PDT

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    Dan Schwartz wrote:

    >
    > One of the nastiest things in slowaris & linux is SunRPC - That was the
    > hole exploited by the widely publicized "Barbed Wire" DDOS attacks in
    > February, when eBay, ZDNet, eTrade, and other high profile Web sites were
    > whacked by "zombies" planted on (mostly) linux boxes...
    >
    > Does OS-X have RPC (Remote Procedure Call) capability?
    >

    Since it is Unix-based, I'll assume it does. However, simply because one
    version of RPC is vulnerable does not mean that all Unix RPC's are.

    We used to have a sign above our rack o' servers : "You are in a maze of
    twisty little Unixes, each slightly different" ;-)

    That version of SunRPC was vulnerable to a buffer overflow exploit,
    IIRC. Many Linux programs have vulnerabilities that the identical BSD
    utilities do not, because they use different libraries or were written
    differently.

    Finally, almost all of these widely noted hacks used exploits that have
    been publicized, patched and plugged. A recent (ISTR) CERT survey showed
    that the ten most widely utilized security holes have all been widely
    noted and fixed; that systems are still being hit with these are due to
    the sysadmins of the systems not keeping things updated. They are still
    getting exploit reports on the IMAP hole that was patched three versions
    and four years ago!

    It's analogous to running NT and never applying any Service Packs.

    -- 
    Bruce Johnson
    University of Arizona
    College of Pharmacy
    Information Technology Group
    

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