Re: in.telnetd bug (linux)

Ian R. Justman (ianj@CALWEB.COM)
Thu, 27 Nov 1997 17:00:12 -0800

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On Tue, 25 Nov 1997, kgb wrote:

> This is my first bugtraq post, If Linux in.telnetd is _supposed_ to do
> this or everyone already knows it does so, I hope Aleph1 doen't let it
> though the list. :-)
>
> This look's harmless, however it does not look like it should be
> 'acceptable' Heres the info on the bug:
>
> If you your 'TERM' variable to anythig that the telnet server your
> telnetting to does _not_ have in the terminfo database, in.telnetd
> coredumps. (leaving a core in /) This core file is dropped with safe
> permissions so only root could read it, and there is nothing that I can
> see 'dangerous' left in it for anyone to read.
>
> This does not appear to affect in.telnetd from some distributions.
> The distribution I did find affected is slackware 3.4.

I tried this on my Slackware 3.3 system at home, so it's safe to assume
that it affects prior versions of Slackware.

Since I don't use Red Hat, I can only assume either:

A. They've corrected a bug in the in.telnetd (assuming they're using the
same code base in this one) that comes with the NetKit distribution of
in.telnetd

B. They use a completely different telnetd from a different "NetKit"

C. Tying partially into B, they wrote their own.

Likewise, I don't see how anyone could exploit this one.

- --Ian.

- ---
Ian R. Justman (ianj@calweb.com)
CalWeb Internet Services Technical Support Team
Finger ianj@calweb.com for my public PGP key.

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