SSH buffer management problem

[Tim Seufert]

On Tuesday, September 16, 2003, at 10:40  AM, Konstantin Riabitsev 
wrote:

> Well, it should also be noted that YDL is a little less vulnerable to
> skript kiddi3 attacks, as memory buffer allocations are completely
> different on PPC than on x86.

That's not really the way to put it.  The security weaknesses are 
typically exactly the same, because (as a general rule) the same source 
code is used for all processor architectures, and weaknesses such as 
buffer overflows are almost always mistakes made at the source code 
level.

What's different about PPC is that naturally one must smash an 
overflowed buffer with PPC binary code rather than x86.  The root kits 
usually only include x86 binaries, so PPC boxes tend to be somewhat 
safer from random script kiddie attacks.  (But clueless script kiddies 
trying to attack a PPC box with an x86 rootkit may still cause pain by 
crashing attackable processes during attempts to get a root shell etc.)