The first condition is when there is an obvious buffer overflow . In 1998, Solaris machines throughout the Internet where compromised by a buffer overflow vulnerability within statd. The second condition is when a long name is seen with binary characters. In the second half of the year 2000, a format string vulnerability was found in popular distributions of Linux. Like the Solaris bug of two years earlier, numerous machines throughout the Internet were compromised by this exploit.
Defense Examine the targetted system.
Make sure the latest patches are installed. Be advised that statd should not be exposed to the Internet. Buffer overflows More about this general class of attacks, which is the root cause of many attacks on the Internet. The length field - this number is larger than expected, thus indicating a possible buffer overflow attempt.