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Easy workaround for the RDS vulnerability

Story: Linux Root Access VulnerabilitiesTotal Replies: 8
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caitlyn

Oct 25, 2010
7:08 PM EDT 		The workaround for the RDS vulnerability is very easy and was done on my systems in nothing flat.

Of course, I am not afraid of typing (or cutting and pasting) a single line in a terminal session as root. I wonder what those who fear and loathe and avoid the dreaded command line are going to do.
azerthoth

Oct 25, 2010
7:20 PM EDT 		Took a look at this one in determining criticality for Sabayon. If RDS is built as a module then it takes user/admin interaction to load it as it's not among those that autoload themselves. This is dependent on if your distro of choice made that decision for you or not, or if they built it into the kernel.

zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -i rds lsmod | grep -i rds

This will let you know if you have to take action or not. If it's built in you do, if it's a module and it's loaded, you do.
tracyanne

Oct 25, 2010
10:15 PM EDT 		that doesn't work on Mint, and I suspect Ubuntu
gus3

Oct 25, 2010
10:23 PM EDT 		I suspect it should be "RDS", all caps.
azerthoth

Oct 26, 2010
12:50 AM EDT 		grep -i makes it case insensitive, not finding the running config TA?
tracyanne

Oct 26, 2010
2:07 AM EDT 		/proc/config.gz doesn't exist.
caitlyn

Oct 26, 2010
8:20 AM EDT 		tracyanne: The fix in the CERT article only disables RDS at boot. If Ubuntu doesn't enable RDS at boot by default the net effect would be zero. It's perfectly harmless to make the change and may block a vulnerability. If you can't test then it's best to go ahead and create the one line /etc/modprobe.d/disable-rds file.
tracyanne

Oct 26, 2010
8:21 AM EDT 		thanks caitlyn
cabreh

Oct 26, 2010
10:05 AM EDT 		Since Ubuntu has already released an updated kernel to cover this issue I expect nothing needs to be done.

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