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Re: 18th anniversary of Internet worm a.k.a. Morris worm

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BlueBoar at thievco

Nov 3, 2006, 8:21 AM

Post #1 of 4 (415 views)
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Re: 18th anniversary of Internet worm a.k.a. Morris worm

Valdis.Kletnieks [at] vt wrote:
> I have to conclude that before that, buffer overflows weren't even well
> known *inside* the security community, much less outside in the wider
> programming community.

They were known and exploited by 1972, in at least some communities.
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/history/ande72.pdf
Pages 44 and 45.
http://osvdb.org/blog/?p=77

BB

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guninski at guninski

Nov 3, 2006, 9:24 AM

Post #2 of 4 (417 views)
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Re: 18th anniversary of Internet worm a.k.a. Morris worm [In reply to]

my question was:

when was the first provable *public* (as in common sense) announcement of the
exploitability of buffer overflows.

didn't mean to underestimate the morris worm.

On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 08:21:37AM -0800, Blue Boar wrote:
> Valdis.Kletnieks [at] vt wrote:
> >I have to conclude that before that, buffer overflows weren't even well
> >known *inside* the security community, much less outside in the wider
> >programming community.
>
> They were known and exploited by 1972, in at least some communities.
> http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/history/ande72.pdf
> Pages 44 and 45.
> http://osvdb.org/blog/?p=77
>
BB
EOM

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davek_throwaway at hotmail

Nov 12, 2006, 10:21 AM

Post #3 of 4 (400 views)
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Re: 18th anniversary of Internet worma.k.a. Morris worm [In reply to]

Georgi Guninski wrote:
> my question was:
>
> when was the first provable *public* (as in common sense)
> announcement of the exploitability of buffer overflows.

The use of smashing the stack to seize control of the program flow was in
everyday usage on the Commodore PET from around 1979-1980ish. It was our
standard technique for making programs autorun after loading!

cheers,
DaveK
--
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....

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Valdis.Kletnieks at vt

Nov 12, 2006, 10:37 AM

Post #4 of 4 (382 views)
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Re: 18th anniversary of Internet worma.k.a. Morris worm [In reply to]

On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 18:21:16 GMT, "Dave \"No, not that one\" Korn" said:
> Georgi Guninski wrote:
> > my question was:
> >
> > when was the first provable *public* (as in common sense)
> > announcement of the exploitability of buffer overflows.
>
> The use of smashing the stack to seize control of the program flow was in
> everyday usage on the Commodore PET from around 1979-1980ish. It was our
> standard technique for making programs autorun after loading!

Was that a "classic" smash-the-stack, where an overly long paramater is used
to over-write the return pointer, or were you guys just intercepting the
return pointer directly? If the latter, I'm pretty sure there was software
that would overlay return pointers in order to redirect program flow as far
back as IBM's OS/360 in the 1967-75 timeframe.

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