The GHOST Vulnerability: What You Need to Know

February 5, 2015 in SiteLock News
GHOST vulnerability

GHOST is now a household name to those even peripherally involved in information security. GHOST is the buffer overflow vulnerability found in certain versions of glibc, the GNU C library, and it’s named after the functions used to reach the exploitable code in the library, gethostbyname() and gethostbyname2().

What has SiteLock done to address the GHOST scourge, and what do SiteLock customers need to know moving forward?

SiteLock patched all TrueShield and TrueSpeed servers against the GHOST vulnerability on September 28, the day after disclosure. Signatures mitigating XML-RPC exploits, which could be used against WordPress installs for example, were implemented beginning the week of February 2nd. And as always, our security team is constantly on the lookout for signs of new GHOST exploitation use.

As a SiteLock customer, we recommend patching all servers using vulnerable versions of glibc, glibc-2.2 to glibc-2.17, to glibc-2.18 or higher. All major Linux vendors released patches for glibc and they should be applied and servers rebooted as soon as possible. Also be aware of SUID-root programs on servers which use gethostbyname*(). To find SUID binaries on a system — a sound security practice regardless of GHOST — open a root shell and run the following command.

# find / -user root -perm -4000 -exec ls -ldb {} ; | tee suid.list

For assistance with the GHOST vulnerability call the SiteLock team at 877.563.2791.

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