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Ars reports that a new bug has been found in GNU Bash allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by setting the process trailing strings after function definitions in the values of environment variables.
This bug is reported to be present in RHEL (ver 4 through 7), Fedora, CentOS (ver 5 through 7), Ubuntu (ver 10.04 LTS, 12.04 LTS, and 14.04 LTS), Debian, and even OS X Mavericks.
This bug is exploitable through Apache servers with mod_cgi and mod_cgid loaded, OpenSSH, malicious DHCP servers in a compromised wireless access point through dhclient, as well as the CUPS printing system.
The Ars also includes a simple single liner that will test your setup for the newly found discovery:
env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"
A vulnerable system will output the following:
vulnerable
this is a test
While a patched or unaffected system outputs:
bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt
bash: error importing function definition for `x'
this is a test
A patch is already out, so administrators are advised to update Bash.
Editor's Update: Security Engineer Tavis Ormandy has said "The bash patch seems incomplete to me, function parsing is still brittle".
$ env X='() { (a)=>\' sh -c "echo date"; cat echo
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25 2014, @09:09PM
Are you trying to imply that Debian is a "major distro" but Red Hat isn't? I hate to break this to you, but Red Hat is the most profitable distribution out there - one of the very few companies making money out of Linux - while Debian is in commercial terms a total irrelevance. The fact you seem to think that Red Hat are pushing bleeding edge but "Ubuntu users" shouldn't "be subjected" to it is a pretty good sign of your utter ignorance -- RHEL is almost absurdly conservative, while Ubuntu has frequently, and without the slightest compunction, broken users' machines with bleeding edge changes.