[security-alerts] FYI: Gentoo pulls vulnerable server offline

["Kazennov, Vladimir" <Vladimir.Kazennov@xxxxxxxxxx>]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=456

August 17th, 2007
Gentoo pulls vulnerable server offline
Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 6:33 am

Gentoo pulls vulnerable server offline The Gentoo Project has removed a server 
hosting several sites and services after the discovery of a potentially serious 
command injection vulnerability.

The open-source group, which produces a popular Linux distribution, said the 
security hole was verified within http://packages.gentoo.org.

"The Infrastructure team verified the vulnerability and the server was 
immediately taken down to prevent further exploitation and to allow for 
forensic analysis," Gentoo said in brief note on its Web site.

The server hosted the following sites and services:

    * archives.gentoo.org
    * packagestest.gentoo.org
    * scripts.gentoo.org
    * archivestest.gentoo.org
    * kiss.gentoo.org
    * packages.gentoo.org
    * stats.gentoo.org
    * survey.gentoo.org

The group said the affected server will be rebuilt while the 
http://packages.gentoo.org service's source undergoes a full security audit 
prior to being restored. The tree and all other services were unaffected.

The Gentoo site vulnerability comes on the heels of this week's security breach 
at Ubuntu that forced the removal of 5 of 8 productions servers from the 
Internet.

The Ubuntu servers were found to be missing security patches, using insecure 
protocols (FTP without SSL) to access the machines and without upgrades past 
breezy due to problems with the network cards and later kernels.