Fergie's Tech Blog

Major Linux Security Glitch Lets Hackers in at Claranet

Chris Williams and John Leyden write on The Register:

A major security vulnerability in the Linux kernel, which was revealed on Sunday, has claimed its first confirmed UK victim in business ISP Claranet.

Hackers used a bug in the sys_vmsplice kernel call, which handles virtual memory management, to gain root privileges and replace Claranet customers' index.html files with the hacker's calling card.

The exploit was noticed at about 6pm on Tuesday.

Claranet said: "Malicious activity related to the vulnerability was detected on Claranet's shared hosting platform. Within 10 minutes Claranet contained and halted the malicious activity, and locked down the platform to prevent further damage.

"The shared hosting platform was fully patched with the vendor's updates by 10am on Wednesday. Less than one per cent of the total web sites hosted on the Claranet platform were affected and all were restored to their original states by 1pm on Wednesday 13 February."

posted by Fergie @ 2/15/2008 03:47:00 PM