Re: Buffer Overruns

[Crispin Cowan <crispin () cse ogi edu>]

Michael Kelly wrote:

>  I really feel silly asking this, but;
>  Can these buffer overrun bugs penetrate firewalls?

It's highly circumstantial.  It depends on:

   * Where the buffer overflow attack needs to go.  Is it just an URL?
     A tag in an HTML file?  A tag in an RTF file?  Etc.
   * What kind of firewall you're using.  They go through packet filters
     like water through a sieve.  They *might* be stopped by a proxy
     filter, depending on what the proxy is looking for.

> I'm trying to convince the boss to ditch IE in favor of Netscape.
> (which is only
> slightly better)

I don't see a huge difference right now.  When Mozilla goes beta, I'll
probably StackGuard it for Linux.

Crispin
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Crispin Cowan, CTO, WireX Communications, Inc.    http://wirex.com
Free Hardened Linux Distribution:                 http://immunix.org