Re: multiple lists commands attack --> majordomo vulnerabity?

[Brent Chapman <Brent @ GreatCircle . COM>]

At 10:59 AM -0800 10/31/97, John Relph wrote:
>On Oct 31, 12:42, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>>>>>>> "MH" == Marko Hotti <mhotti@lists.oulu.fi> writes:
>>
>>MH> The other mailing list server I'm running and administering at the
>>MH> moment was attacked by some idiot who had sent about 50 subsequent
>>MH> messages to the majordomo address - each message containing +100 lines
>>MH> of the majordomo command 'lists'.
>>
>>For some reason I neglected to notice that there were multiple commands in
>>a single message.  John L. already posted a solution that works for 1.9x; I
>>can't do something quite that naive for 2.0 because doing a full list
>>reconfiguration might take a huge number of commands.
>>
>>I suppose a per-transaction limit should be imposed by the core and should
>>limit unapproved commands.  I'll have to think about it some more.
>
>Is there any reason why duplicate commands could not be ignored?
>
>For example:
>
>	lists
>	lists
>	newconfig
>	info
>	intro
>	intro
>	lists
>
>The second lists command could be ignored and the second intro command
>could be ignored.
>
>	-- John

Doesn't seem worth the trouble...  It does nothing to prevent someone from
sending you each of those commands in a separate message.  Also leads to
some funky user-unfriendly behavior: "why isn't it doing exactly what I
told it to do?"


-Brent

--
Brent Chapman                   Internet/intranet training and consulting,
Brent@GreatCircle.COM           specializing in network design and security.
Great Circle Associates, Inc.   Visit us at http://www.greatcircle.com/