Vulnerability Development: Re: OpenSSh 3.4p1 PrivilegeSerparation experiment

[Aaron.Hayden () Colorado EDU]

Hi,
Here is a conglomeration response to the many emails I received.

  point: it is a _feature_ that makes it easy to upgrade versions.

Perhaps it is.  Or maybe it is just easier for sshd to ignore processes
forked to continue sessions while it handles its own signals.  This is
of course not necessary behavior for upgrading OpenSSh remotely.

  point: why would you expect current sessions to reread config?

Well, I wouldn't.  But I would expect terminations of sessions spawned
under the original's configuration (all connections in my example).  In
other words, I'd not expect all ssh daemons to die, but sessions run by
the sshd process I kill should halt.

  point: vuln-dev?

No, not really.  I only realized sshd does this on SIGHUP reading the
source a few days ago.  If it surprises you like it does me, then sure
you're vulnerable.

-- 
                                         
  . .;i  Aaron.Hayden () Colorado EDU  i;. .
   '` !     hayden.offwhite.net     ! `'

: 'Knowledge of self is like life after death.'

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