RE: Solaris telnet vulnberability - how many on your network?

[Michal Zalewski <lcamtuf () dione ids pl>]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007, Gadi Evron wrote:

> I have to agree with a previous poster and suspect (only suspect) it
> could somehow be a backdoor rather than a bug.

You're attributing malice to what could be equally well (or better!)
explained by incompetence or gross negligence. The latter two haunt large
companies far more often, compared to sinister conspiracies.

Yeah, a backdoor is a remote possibility. But it's also an arbitrary and
needlessly complex one. Maybe it's a nefarious plot by our UFO-appointed
shadow government, but chances are, it's not (they have better things to
do today).

Keep that in mind: when risking so much, of all the places to put a covert
backdoor to use for years to come, pulling out a known flaw that will be
spotted by many existing vulnerability scanners, and putting it in a
service that is often disabled as obsolete and generally unreachable from
the outside world, doesn't really make that much sense.

Unless, of course, it's a sabotage attempt orchestrated by a joint team of
IBM and SCO developers... now, that begins to make sense..

/mz