Mailinglist Archive

New hacking technique exploits common programming error
By Dennis Fisher, Executive Editor
23 Jul 2007 | SearchSecurity.com

Researchers at Watchfire Inc. say they have discovered a reliable
method for exploiting a common programming error, which until now had
been considered simply a quality problem and not a security
vulnerability.

Jonathan Afek and Adi Sharabani of Watchfire stumbled upon the method
for remotely exploiting dangling pointers by chance while they were
running the company's AppScan software against a Web server. The
server crashed in the middle of the scan and after some investigation,
the pair found that a dangling pointer had been the culprit. This
wasn't a surprising result, given that these coding errors are
well-known for causing crashes at odd times. But after some further
experimentation, Afek and Sharabani found that they could cause the
crash intentionally by sending a specially crafted URL to the server
and began looking for a way to run their own code on the target
machine.

Afek, a senior security researcher at Watchfire, will give a
presentation on the technique at the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas
in August.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci1265116,00.html