[Yum-devel] Is YUM really a secure pacakage manager ?

[Akshay Wattal]

Hi,

Lately i did some research on security issues related to differnt package managers including YUM and found out that there can be some vulnerabilities in YUM. So far YUM checks the signature which is on each individual package,In this model, the package manager has no signatures to check until it gets to the point where it downloads the actual packages it intends to install.
Keeping this in mind the vulnerabilities that are possible are as follows:

---->Metadata Manipulation Attack:  The attack in this case involves a malicious party responding to a package manager’s request by making their own metadata, There are two main things attackers can do First, they can mix-and-match the versions of packages that are listed. Second, they can trick clients into thinking that packages have different dependencies and provide different functionality than they really do.
In mixing-and-matching vulnerable package versions by listing them in the same metadata given to a client, attackers make it more likely that, whatever new package a client installs, it is installing a version with a known vulnerability.

---->Freeze Attack: In this an attacker can keep giving the client a single version of the metadata starting at one point in time (that is, “freezing” the metadata), the attacker can prevent the client from knowing about new metadata and thus new packages that are available that fix known vulnerabilities.

---->Endless data Attack: It involves a malicious party responding to a client request, be it for metadata or for a package, with an endless stream of data. The possible effects include filling up the partition where the package manager saves downloaded files or exhausting memory.


These are few "possible" vulnerabilities which can be found in YUM.

Thanks 


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