Performance Copilot
CVE 2000-0283
Impact
An unauthorized remote user could use the IRIX Performance Copilot to
gather information on system processes and filesystems, or to
impair system performance by consuming large amounts of memory.
Background
The IRIX Performance Copilot is used to collect and analyze system
performance metrics. It is installed by default on IRIX 6.5 and
possibly other versions of IRIX.
The Problem
The Performance Copilot runs a daemon (pmcd) which shares
information, such as detailed process lists and filesystem information,
with remote users. By default, this daemon has no access restrictions,
so any remote user can use it.
The information returned by pmcd can be used to gather
information that could help an attacker plan an attack.
Any system running pmcd is vulnerable unless the
Performance Copilot has been specifically configured to
disallow access from anywhere other than the local host.
The Performance Copilot can also be used to consume large
amounts of memory on the system by sending very long strings
to the daemon. The memory is not freed when the connection
terminates, so the performance of the system will remain
impaired after this condition is exploited.
Resolution
If you do not need the daemon, then shut it off by entering:
chkconfig pmcd off
If you do need the daemon to be running, then restrict access
to it by appending the following lines to /etc/pmcd.conf:
[access]
allow localhost: all ;
disallow * : all;
Where can I read more about this?
Details about this vulnerability were posted to
Bugtraq.