Hackers digging through Solaris hole
ZDNet | at | by Mike
Online vandals are using a two-month-old security hole in Sun Microsystems' Solaris and other Unix operating systems to break into servers on the Internet, a security expert said Tuesday. Researchers witnessed the attack when one intruder broke into a Solaris server under intense observation as part of the Honeynet Project, an initiative to develop ways to turn spare computers into digital fly traps to study and document actual Internet attacks.
"One of our honey pots got whacked with it," said Lance Spitzner, project manager for the Honeynet Project. "As far as we know, it was the first time we saw (this flaw) used in the wild."
The flaw, commonly referred to as a "buffer overflow," allows a specially crafted packet of Internet data to cause a computer to give an online vandal full access to its capabilities. Details of the software hole, which affects Solaris, IBM's AIX, HP-UX and other Unix operating systems, were published in November.