You are currently viewing How To Protect Your Linux Server from the GHOST Vulnerability

How To Protect Your Linux Server from the GHOST Vulnerability

GHOST vulnerability affecting Linux systems was discovered in the C library of GNU / Linux (glibc) that gives control to attackers without requiring system credentials.

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GHOST creates a buffer overflow that affects all the gethostbyname*() functions in the glibc library. These functions change a hostname into an IP addresses. A hacker exploiting this can gain complete access of the Linux machine.

To verify you are running the updated packages, run the following commands:

rpm -qa glibc
rpm -qa nscd

 

The updated versions for CentOS 5 and 6 are shown below:

####
CentOS 5:

glibc-2.5-123.el5_11.1
nscd-2.5-123.el5_11.1

 

CentOS 6:

glibc-2.12-1.149.el6_6.5
nscd-2.12-1.149.el6_6.5

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Not on these versions of CentOS? Run “yum update glibc nscd” to update the package.

A server reboot is recommended to ensure that all services begin using the new packages. If a reboot is not possible, most processes should be restarted on the server.

Jobair Alam Bipul

I'm Jobair Alam, a cPanel Certified WHM/cPanel server administrator and web hosting expert with over 10 years of experience in the industry.

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