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Root access vulnerability in glibc library impacts many Linux distros
(securityaffairs.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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"A qsort vulnerability is due to a missing bounds check and can lead to memory corruption. It has been present in all versions of glibc since 1992. "
This one amazes me. Imagine how many vulnerabilities future researchers will discover in ancient software that persisted/persist for decades.
That's not the main part of the article, just a footnote, for anyone wondering.
So, it must be with the BSDs too?
BSDs use libc
Iirc bad does not use glibc, but I'm not very involved with BSD.
It wouldn't make sense. Glibc is LGPL licensed, not really compatible with the BSD license...
Wait, why has a compiler system log functionlity?
glibc is a library, gcc is the compiler.
You are probably confusing the glibc with gcc and g++. Glibc is an implementation of the C standard library, made by GNU (thats where the g in the name comes from).
If you were to look into it, it uses the syscalls to tell the underlying computer system what to do when you call functions, such as
printf.If you want to read more, see here
C is just crazy. You accidentally forget to put the bounds in a sorting function, and now you are root.
According to the link in the article, the qsort() bug can only be triggered with a non-transitive cmp() function. Would such a cmp function ever be useful?
You don't necessarily have to write a non-transitive cmp() function willingly, it may happen that you write one without realizing due to some edge cases where it's not transitive.