Becoming Superuser by Exploiting Buffer Overflow

• Common UNIX attack to gain complete access
• Buffer overflows exploit software bugs that cause it to overwrite segments of memory
• Two types of buffer overflows
  • Side Effect - Used to modify system files such as /etc/passwd, /.rhost, ...
  • Code Insertion - Inserts new executable code to run additional commands as superuser (root)
• Examples: sendmail, ppl, xosview, etc.
• New buffer overflows continue to be discovered