full-disclosure - Re: Solaris telnet vulnberability

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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0702132025130.5750@dione>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:36:20 +0100 (CET)
From: Michal Zalewski <lcamtuf@...ne.ids.pl>
To: Gadi Evron <ge@...uxbox.org>
Cc: Oliver Friedrichs <oliver_friedrichs@...antec.com>,
	bugtraq@...urityfocus.com, full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Solaris telnet vulnberability - how many on
	your network?

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007, Gadi Evron wrote:

> I have to agree with a previous poster and suspect (only suspect) it
> could somehow be a backdoor rather than a bug.

You're attributing malice to what could be equally well (or better!)
explained by incompetence or gross negligence. The latter two haunt large
companies far more often, compared to sinister conspiracies.

Yeah, a backdoor is a remote possibility. But it's also an arbitrary and
needlessly complex one. Maybe it's a nefarious plot by our UFO-appointed
shadow government, but chances are, it's not (they have better things to
do today).

Keep that in mind: when risking so much, of all the places to put a covert
backdoor to use for years to come, pulling out a known flaw that will be
spotted by many existing vulnerability scanners, and putting it in a
service that is often disabled as obsolete and generally unreachable from
the outside world, doesn't really make that much sense.

Unless, of course, it's a sabotage attempt orchestrated by a joint team of
IBM and SCO developers... now, that begins to make sense..

/mz

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