Mambo News

Exploits galore

Not really a week to remember, the world seems to have been conspiring against us. It was bad enough finding out about a new exploit in Mambo. But we'd no sooner fixed it than we seemed to be the focus of a worldwide panic about Linux worms! It is really painful for people who get hacked, and we do our level best to resist it. Sadly, it takes time to block up all the holes, and despite taking a lot of care, there is always the risk that new holes will appear.

The real Mambo problem came to us from a security researcher, just at a bad time. The old Mamboforge was down and The Source was still in preparation. So part of the problem was to find a distribution mechanism. The fix was actually written within hours of the issue being raised. It is always difficult to figure out exactly how to give out the fix, and how to get a balance between giving information and helping hackers. If anyone has good ideas on this, please talk to us!

Mare.D was built up into a story that spread around the internet like wildfire. We still don't know why. Some people are keen to build up Linux related vulnerabilities, and there is suspicion that journalists are wound up by the security companies themselves. Anyway, it turned out that there was really no foundation to the story, unless it was that we had just passed the first anniversary of an old exploit in Mambo!

In the middle of all the security excitement, I had to go to a real world meeting, not to do with Mambo. I'd almost forgotten what a bother it can be, finding parking, catching trains, standing on cold railway stations. Oddly enough, the same day, there was a Mambo Foundation Board meeting – four people from three different continents, and none of us left our offices. We used Skype, so it was yet another case of the internet making life easier – how did we ever manage without it?

-counterpoint 

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