Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 23:20:14 -0400 From: Rick Murphy <rmurphy@ITM-INST.COM> Subject: Re: FWTK x-gw Security Advisory [GSA2000-01] To: BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM There's a short solution for this problem - Don't allow anyone other than administrator to log in to your firewall directly. Or, don't run x-gw setuid. If either of the above is true, the bug can't be exploited. I'd like to think there's nobody out there running x-gw setuid root. (You're supposed to TURN OFF the setuid bits of unnecessary programs, not grant root permission to programs that don't need it.) However, if you're running that way, chmod 555 x-gw and you're safe. What complicates this is that x-gw could possibly be set up by someone to run by a daemon or program that's setuid root and which fails to drop privileges before it forks x-gw. The patch will be published on the www.fwtk.org web site for distribution. I'd be interested if anyone is actually vulnerable to this; send me private mail. -Rick