Experts warn of buffer overflow flaw in Solaris
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
A vulnerability in Solaris puts systems running the Sun Microsystems operating system at risk of being taken over by an attacker, experts warned late Monday. A buffer overflow flaw lies in Sun's implementation of the X Windows Font Service (XFS), which serves font files to clients and runs by default on all versions of Solaris, according to advisories issued by Internet Security Systems (ISS) and the Computer Emergency Response Team/Coordination Center (CERT/CC).
By formulating a specific XFS query, remote attackers can either crash the service or run arbitrary code with the privileges of the "nobody user." This privilege level is limited and similar to a normal user. However, after gaining access an attacker could use privilege escalation flaws to attain root status, the highest privilege level, ISS said.