Hole found in Samba code

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 18 Mar 2003 at 12:44

A security vulnerability in the open source Samba server code could allow an external attacker to remotely and anonymously gain Super User (root) privileges.

Samba.org reports that: 'A flaw has been detected in the Samba main smbd code which could allow an external attacker to remotely and anonymously gain Super User privileges on a server running a Samba server. This flaw exists in previous versions of Samba from 2.0.x to 2.2.7a inclusive. This is a serious problem and all sites should either upgrade to Samba 2.2.8 immediately or prohibit access to TCP ports 139 and 445.'

Details and links to the Samba 2.2.8 downloads are available from us1.samba.org/samba/whatsnew/samba-2.2.8.html.
Samba allows Unix- and Linux-based systems to provide file and print services to SMB/CIFS clients, such as PCs running Windows.

One Web site break-in in Germany has already been attributed to this vulnerability. Apple has announced that it will be releasing an OS X security update to address this problem.