Potentially dangerous security issue in EeePC
As the Kyro38 links to at VR-Zone, there’s an article at Rise Security that the default Xandros install on an EeePC has a security flaw (thanks to _Q_R_ for pointing out that I wasn’t referencing the original news). The smbd version installed is 3.0.24 which has a known vulnerability which could allow an attacker to issue file system commands as root.
What he fails to point out is an easy workaround. Simply disable smbd (why would you need this on a mobile client in the first place)? At least until Asus / Xandros issue an update.
Open a terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T) and edit the /etc/default/samba file (this has to be done as superuser):
sudo vi /etc/default/samba
Go to the last line and change the RUN_MODE to “inetd”.
After the next reboot your EeePC should be secure again.
Thanks for visiting!
I hope this was helpful - if not, please leave a comment and let me know why! Were you searching for something else? Did I miss an important aspect?
You are linking to a repost of the original story. The exploit was originally reported here: http://www.risesecurity.org/blog/entry/6/
Which OS do you recommend? The Xandros install? Or EeeDora - I can’t tell from what you write which one you work with… what are the trade-offs?
The default build still has advantages - the wireless tool is much better than WiFi Radar in Fedora. But I spend most of my time in EeeDora these days and expect to switch for good, soon.
Hi Dirk,
There’s also another security problem in Eeepc (which I think it’s quite harder to exploit, but it’s there nevertheless): the random number seed setting at each boot which should be performed by fastinit seems to be flawed. Using finit-mod from my reimplementation should fix that (or binary patch the original fastinit).