GHOST Bug

What Does GHOST Bug Mean?

The GHOST bug is a security vulnerability found in the GNU C Library (glibc) used by the Linux operating system. It was discovered by security firm Qualys in January 2015. According to Trend Micro, however, the affected library was already patched by May 2013.

Techopedia Explains GHOST Bug

The flaw is found in the “gethostbyname” and “gethostbyname2” functions of the glibc library. These functions are used to resolve a domain name to its IP address. The GHOST bug can be exploited to create a buffer overflow, a vulnerability that allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected system, enabling the attacker to control the system. As the bug was already fixed in 2013, newer systems are not affected by this flaw. Moreover, the said functions are already obsolete, having been superseded by the “getaddrinfo” function.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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