Tutorial - Performance Copilot

##
Performance Copilot

CVE 2000-0283

### Impact

An unauthorized remote user could use the IRIX Performance Copilot to gather information on system processes and filesystems, or to impair system performance by consuming large amounts of memory.

### Background

The IRIX Performance Copilot is used to collect and analyze system performance metrics. It is installed by default on IRIX 6.5 and possibly other versions of IRIX.

### The Problem

The Performance Copilot runs a daemon (`pmcd`) which shares information, such as detailed process lists and filesystem information, with remote users. By default, this daemon has no access restrictions, so any remote user can use it. The information returned by `pmcd` can be used to gather information that could help an attacker plan an attack. Any system running `pmcd` is vulnerable unless the Performance Copilot has been specifically configured to disallow access from anywhere other than the local host.

The Performance Copilot can also be used to consume large amounts of memory on the system by sending very long strings to the daemon. The memory is not freed when the connection terminates, so the performance of the system will remain impaired after this condition is exploited.

### Resolution

If you do not need the daemon, then shut it off by entering:

> `chkconfig pmcd off`

If you do need the daemon to be running, then restrict access to it by appending the following lines to `/etc/pmcd.conf`:

> `[access]
> allow localhost: all ;
> disallow * : all;`

### Where can I read more about this?

Details about this vulnerability were posted to Bugtraq.