SCP client vulnerabilities, BSDs vs Linux benchmarks on a Tyan EPYC Server, fame for the Unix inventors, Die IPv4, GhostBSD 18.12 released, Unix in pictures, and more.
##Headlines
###scp client multiple vulnerabilities

Overview
SCP clients from multiple vendors are susceptible to a malicious scp server performing
unauthorized changes to target directory and/or client output manipulation.
Description
Many scp clients fail to verify if the objects returned by the scp server match those
it asked for. This issue dates back to 1983 and rcp, on which scp is based. A separate
flaw in the client allows the target directory attributes to be changed arbitrarily.
Finally, two vulnerabilities in clients may allow server to spoof the client output.
Impact
Malicious scp server can write arbitrary files to scp target directory, change the
target directory permissions and to spoof the client output.
Details


The discovered vulnerabilities, described in more detail below, enables the attack
described here in brief.




The attacker controlled server or Man-in-the-Middle(*) attack drops .bash_aliases file to victim’s home directory when the victim performs scp operation from the server. The transfer of extra files is hidden by sending ANSI control sequences via stderr. For example:



user@local:~$ scp user@remote:readme.txt .
readme.txt 100% 494 1.6KB/s 00:00
user@local:~$



Once the victim launches a new shell, the malicious commands in .bash_aliases get executed.


*) Man-in-the-Middle attack does require the victim to accept the wrong host fingerprint.


###FreeBSD 12.0 vs. DragonFlyBSD 5.4 vs. TrueOS 18.12 vs. Linux On A Tyan EPYC Server

Last month when running FreeBSD 12.0 benchmarks on a 2P EPYC server I wasn’t able to run any side-by-side benchmarks with the new DragonFlyBSD 5.4 as this BSD was crashing during the boot process on that board. But fortunately on another AMD EPYC server available, the EPYC 1P TYAN Transport SX TN70A-B8026, DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1 runs fine. So for this first round of BSD benchmarking in 2019 are tests of FreeBSD 11.2, FreeBSD 12.0, DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1, the new TrueOS 18.12, and a few Linux distributions (CentOS 7, Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, and Clear Linux) on this EPYC 7601 server in a variety of workloads.


DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1 ran fine on this Tyan server and could boot fine unlike the issue encountered on the Dell PowerEdge R7425 for this particular BSD. But on the Tyan server, DragonFlyBSD 5.2.2 wouldn’t boot so only this latest DragonFlyBSD release series was used as part of the comparison.



A summary of the operating systems tested for this EPYC 7601 OS benchmark comparison included:


DragonFlyBSD 5.4.1 - The latest release of Matthew Dillon’s operating system while using the HAMMER2 file-system and GCC 8.1 compiler that is now the default system compiler for this BSD.


FreeBSD 11.2 - The previous stable release of FreeBSD. Installed with a ZFS file-system.


FreeBSD 12.0 - The latest stable release of FreeBSD and installed with its ZFS option.


TrueOS 18.12 - The latest release of the iX systems’ FreeBSD derivative. TrueOS 18.12 is based on FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT and uses ZFS by default and was using the Clang 7.0.1 compiler compared to Clang 6.0.1 on FreeBSD 12.0.


CentOS Linux 7 - The latest EL7 operating system performance.


Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS - The latest Ubuntu Long Term Support release.


Clear Linux 27120 - The latest rolling release as of testing out of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center. Clear Linux often reflects as close to the gold standard for performance as possible with its insanely tuned software stack for offering optimal performance on x86_64 performance for generally showing best what the hardware is capable of.



Throughout all of this testing, the Tyan 2U server was kept to its same configuration of an AMD EPYC 7601 (32 cores / 64 threads) at stock speeds, 8 x 16GB DDR4-2666 ECC memory, and 280GB Intel Optane 900p SSD benchmarks.


##News Roundup
National Inventors Hall of Fame