The most new and dangerous bug around it’s the one called “shellshock”, this is a security bug in the widely used Unix Bash shell which was disclosed on 24 September 2014. Many Internet daemons, such as web servers, use Bash to process certain commands, allowing an attacker to cause vulnerable versions of Bash to execute arbitrary commands. This can allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access to a computer system.
The bug causes Bash to unintentionally execute commands when they are stored in specially crafted environment variables. Within days, a series of further related vulnerabilities in Bash were found, leading to the need for further patches.
By 25 September, botnets based on computers compromised with this exploit were being used by attackers for distributed denial-of-service attacks and vulnerability scanning, source wikipedia
Let’s see how to check if your computer or server is vulnerable.
Verify and see if you are vulnerable is fortunately very easy, just open a terminal and issue this command:
env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo Shellshock test" |
If your system is vulnerable you will see this output:
myuser@vulnerablepc:~> env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo Shellshock test" vulnerable Shellshock test |
So you get two lines of output, while if the system has already been upgraded you will get only the second line, or an output such as:
[me@mysafepc ~]$ env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo Shellshock test" Shellshock test |
In this case you must immediately update your system.
Update of your system
To solve the problem just update the package bash, open a terminal and type the following instructions:
Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and derivates:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bash
Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat and derivates:
sudo yum install bash
Gentoo and derivates
Depending on the version of bash that you are using there are different commands available
For example if you are using bash version 4.2, you can use these commands:
# emerge –sync
# emerge –ask –oneshot –verbose “>=app-shells/bash-4.2_p48-r1”
openSUSE and derivates:
sudo zypper install bash
Arch Linux and derivates as Chakra, Manjaro ecc:
sudo pacman -Sy bash
Once you have done the upgrade I suggest you to do a reboot of the system, at this point just redo the verification and you should have solved every problem!
Popular Posts:
- None Found
