dhis2-users team mailing list archive

[Jason Pickering <jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx>]

Apologies, there was a typo here..

The command to see all processes which may be run by a Tomcat user (if they
are called something like "tomcat6" or "tomcat7") should have been.

"ps -ef | grep tomcat"

Regards,
Jason



On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Jason Pickering <
jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Brajesh,
>
> Lars's mail could have provided a bit more explicit advice I think, but as
> you can see in Lars's email, it is stated
>
> "We have upgraded dhis version 2.12, 2.13 and snapshot/trunk with the new
> version."
>
> I think the clear message is that anyone using DHIS2 should upgrade to the
> latest versions 2.12 or 2.13. Older versions of DHIS2 will be subject to
> this exploit. It is also described in a bit more detail here<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20017515/aws-network-traffic-high-due-to-folder-29881-and-fake-cfg>
> .
>
> The names do not have to be numerical only either. In order to be sure
> that you are not suffering from this, you can invoke
>
> "ps -ef | grep tocmat" to see all the processes which are running with the
> tomcat user. If you are using a different username other than "tomcat6" or
> "tomcat7" you should replace the username with the actual name.
> Alternatively, you can do "ps -ef | grep tmp" to try and see if there is
> anything running which should not be running from the "/tmp" directory. You
> can the easily kill the process, but it will spawn again by itself. After
> the upgrade to the latest version however, it should not reappear.
>
> If you need a patch for your own branch, as Lars points out, it has been
> committed to trunk here<http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs-core/dhis2/trunk/revision/13386>
> .
>
> Best regards,
> Jason
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 25, 2013 at 7:39 PM, Brajesh Murari <brajesh.murari@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
>> Dear Lars,
>>
>> Its great news for DHIS2 regular users and system administrators, that
>> one of big security vulnerability has been found/detected and remedial
>> action can be taken to resolve the problem. But i am not that much sure
>> that most of the implementers would like to upgrade live application on
>> their server only for this problem, who are using DHIS 2.12 build as an
>> assumption as a very good stable release in series so far since they are
>> using DHIS 2. Its good that application should be upgraded DHIS 2.12 to
>> DHIS 2.13 on live servers, but at the same time scrum masters should also release
>> some stable patches releases as well for DHIS 2.12 release for fixingabove stated like problems, that will prevent unnecessary wastage of time
>> and money in system application version up-gradation only for fixing miner
>> problem. Because in normal and general software implementation
>> practices, we use to release patches to fix these types of issues, at the
>> same time implementers expectations are the same.
>>
>> Regards
>> Brajesh Murari
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Life Is A Collection of Poems.
>>
>>
>>   On Wednesday, 25 December 2013 6:54 PM, Lars Helge Øverland <
>> larshelge@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>  Hi,
>>
>> we have recently detected a security exploit on a couple of servers
>> running dhis. The exploit seems to result in shell access with
>> permissions of the user which is running tomcat.
>>
>>
>> *Symptoms* of the exploit are presence of:
>>
>> - a file /tmp/fake.cfg.
>> - various files with numeric-only names in /tmp directory.
>> - massive outgoing network traffic (> 200 Gb per day).
>>
>> The files will be owned by the user running tomcat. The outgoing network
>> traffic is likely to be part of denial-of-service attacks against other
>> servers.
>>
>>
>> *Cause* of the exploit is likely to be one or more weaknesses in Struts
>> 2, which is a web framework used in dhis. These weaknesses have been fixed
>> in Struts version 2.3.15.1. We have upgraded dhis version 2.12, 2.13 and
>> snapshot/trunk with the new version. You can download the new WAR files
>> from dhis2.org/downloads as usual.
>>
>>
>> *To remove* the exploit you should do the following:
>>
>> - stop tomcat
>> - upgrade your dhis version (to 2.12 or 2.13)
>> - remove all of the above mentioned files from /tmp (all owned by tomcat
>> user).
>> - kill all processes owned by the tomcat user, or simply reboot the
>> server.
>> - delete all files and folders under <tomcat-install-dir>/work/Catalina
>> (not confirmed but to be on the safe side).
>>
>> If you have been running tomcat as root (sudo) then a full operating
>> system re-install is recommended. There is no way to completely verify what
>> an exploit can do with full permissions. Running tomcat as root is strictly
>> discouraged in any case.
>>
>>
>> *Summary*
>>
>> - In any case you should upgrade your dhis version, whether you see the
>> symptoms or not.
>> - If you see the symptoms but have been running dhis with regular,
>> non-root privileges, you will be fine by following the removal steps.
>> - If you see the symptoms and have been running dhis with root
>> privileges, you should do a clean server installation.
>>
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> Lars
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> _______________________________________________
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>> Post to    : dhis2-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>