Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 01:17:42 +1000 From: freebsd-security@auscert.org.au To: Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-security@freebsd.org, "Dolan- Gavitt, Brendan F." <brendandg@mitre.org> Subject: Re: Determining vulnerability to issues described by SAs Message-ID: <200607051517.k65FHg61044302@app.auscert.org.au> In-Reply-To: Message from Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org> of "Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:13:44 MST." <44A5E868.60508@freebsd.org>
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Hi Colin, On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:13:44 -0700, Colin Percival wrote: >Dolan- Gavitt, Brendan F. wrote: >> I've been trying for the past few days to come up with a method for >> checking a FreeBSD system to see if it is vulnerable to an issue >> described by a FreeBSD security advisory in some automated way [...] This is an issue I also have given some thought to. ... >> I'm fairly new to FreeBSD, so I may just be missing something >> here--is there a reliable way to determine if a system is patched >> according to a particular security advisory? > >In short, no. If you have any ideas, let me know. :-) I've been canonically rebuilding my systems for each patch (or at least every time a vulnerability affects my hosts) to cover this very issue, even if a rebuild isn't strictly necessary. In addition to this, however, I usually generate an mtree file from a pre-production installation so that I can compare any given build with running systems to identify changes, such as those occurring as a result of patching - kind of like a base 'tripwire', in fact. Would this be a solution? Each advisory could come with a custom mtree file that covers the affected files explicitly and/or another mtree file that covers the files for this patch _and_ for all previous patches up to that point; you could name the mtree after the patchlevel eg RELENG_5_3.mtree.p31 - this should work, regardless of how the patch was applied as the end result is (almost?) always the same at the binary level. regards, -- Joel Hatton -- Infrastructure Manager | Hotline: +61 7 3365 4417 AusCERT - Australia's national CERT | Fax: +61 7 3365 7031 The University of Queensland | WWW: www.auscert.org.au Qld 4072 Australia | Email: auscert@auscert.org.au
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