Researchers have found a new bug in the UNIX-like operating systems, including Linux and Mac OS X, which can allow the injection and execution of an arbitrary code onto the system. The vulnerability is mostly affecting the BASH shell, Bourne Again Shell, which is common among all the UNIX-like operating system.
Stephane Chazeles, a security researcher, found that the Bash shell variables can be processed: trailing code in function definitions was executed, independent of the variable name.
The security list read, “Stephane Chazelas discovered a vulnerability in bash, related to how environment variables are processed: trailing code in function definitions was executed, independent of the variable name. In many common configurations, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network. Chet Ramey, the GNU bash upstream maintainer, will soon release official upstream patches.”
The patch is already on its way, and other operating system based on Linux, including Debian and Red Hat, can download the bash update. However, there are still few servers around the world that are yet not informed about the bug and can be compromised easily. The vulnerability is capable of creating a reverse shell; that can lead to the take-over of the entire server. Not only it applies to the server machines, home users running Linux, and Mac can be affected by it. It works as soon as the shell is invoked.
“Shell Shock is incredibly easy to exploit,” Jeremiah Grossman, chief executive officer of Santa Clara-based Internet security company, “Compromise of one affected system can automatically spread to another vulnerable system. If this is the case, Shell Shock could easily turn out to be a much bigger problem than Heartbleed.”
The patch for this vulnerability is now available for download, and in case if you are using a UNIX bases operating, we request to update it right away.
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