Vendors have been warned that a flaw in Unix could allow hackers to take control of their systems Six vendors including IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems have been alerted about a flaw that could allow hackers to take control of Unix . . .
Vendors have been warned that a flaw in Unix could allow hackers to take control of their systems Six vendors including IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems have been alerted about a flaw that could allow hackers to take control of Unix systems.

Internet Security Systems (ISS) identified the Unix vulnerability about a month ago, and the company warned the serious weakness could be found in the systems of six Unix vendors. ISS and the Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert) issued an alert about the problem.

According to Cert's advisory, the vulnerability exists in a function used by the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). Because of an error in the way requests from clients are validated, hackers could manipulate data and cause a buffer overflow, the advisory warned. The affected software is included with several versions of Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Sun's Solaris, Caldera OpenUnix and UnixWare, and Compaq's Tru64 Unix.

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