Patch Integration Engine (PIE) / News: Recent posts

Another alpha release, but a large step in the right direction. This release includes the latest dissassembler from the Bastard project (http://bastard.sourceforge.net/), libdisasm 0.21-pre2. This version appears to fix some siginificant bugs in previous releases. Bugs in pie itself are now better handled as well, with default signal handlers for segfaults and keyboard interrupts. Finally, a new function discovery method using a primitive (but effective) form of call graphing has been implemented to accompany the existing pattern matching.... read more

Sure enough, my promise of a beta release is broken again, but not without good reason. I've added a really nice feature with this release in user defined depth of pointer dereferencing in assertion functions, something that should go a long way to ensuring the usability of the libpie interface. Progress on the beta is definitely being made. Proof of this can be seen in the new doc ument that I have just uploaded to the webserver, a full working example of PIE in action against the proftpd _xlate_ascii_write buffer overflow. Check it out in the documentation section of the website.... read more

The third, and most likely final alpha release of the Patch Integration Engine has been released, version 0.4. The mainchange in this release is the introduction of support to remove prepatch data from a previously patched process. Support for editing multiple processes at one time has also been greatly improved, with a number of bugs being tracked down and obliterated. Since I now have all of the features that I wanted for a beta release, all that needs to be done is a complete update of all the documentation, and the development of as many example prepatches as possible. Stay tuned!... read more

The second alpha release of the Patch Integration Engine has been made, version 0.3. It's been a long break between drinks, but this release is a sure sign that the beta release is on the horizon. The major change in this version has been the introduction of a new and much improved function fingerprinting system. Full documentation of the technical details will be up on the website shortly.

As this release is not considered stable it should NOT be used on a production server.

The first release of the Patch Integration Engine has been made. The release version is 0.2 and is still considered to be in an alpha state. This is in contrast to a previous news item that stated that the first release would be a beta.

Holding back the beta release was due to a lack of general testing across multiple distributions, while the 0.2 version number was due to a significant bug being patched in the original 0.1 release.... read more

The Patch Integration Engine is nearing its first beta release, version 0.1. The major features planned for this release have all been developed and are available on CVS. This means that only testing and documentation needs to be completed before the release can be made. Documentation will be included in the source tree and the official project website as soon as it is completed:

http://pie.sourceforge.net/

Public development of the Patch Integration Engine (PIE) has begun. I am currently working towards the first release, which should be finished within the month.

What is PIE? Why was it developed?

PIE is a system designed to allow the injection of security patches into existing program processes. In the event that a new vulnerability is discovered in a server program running as a daemon on your network, it is most desirable to immediately remedy the problem through the application of a patch. However, in some cases immediate recourse through the normal patching process may not be viable - perhaps the daemon is mission critical and cannot undergo any unscheduled downtime without substantial disruption or even monetary loss. In such a situation it would be desirable to patch the server processes while not incurring any downtime. This is where PIE is neccesary.