GLSA 200412-15: Ethereal: Multiple vulnerabilities

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	high
Title:	Ethereal: Multiple vulnerabilities
Date:	12/19/2004
Bugs:	#74443
ID:	200412-15

Synopsis

Multiple vulnerabilities exist in Ethereal, which may allow an attacker to run arbitrary code, crash the program or perform DoS by CPU and disk utilization.

Background

Ethereal is a feature rich network protocol analyzer.

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
net-analyzer/ethereal	< 0.10.8	>= 0.10.8	All supported architectures

Description

There are multiple vulnerabilities in versions of Ethereal earlier than 0.10.8, including:

Bug in DICOM dissection discovered by Bing could make Ethereal crash (CAN 2004-1139).
An invalid RTP timestamp could make Ethereal hang and create a large temporary file (CAN 2004-1140).
The HTTP dissector could access previously-freed memory (CAN 2004-1141).
Brian Caswell discovered that an improperly formatted SMB could make Ethereal hang (CAN 2004-1142).

Impact

An attacker might be able to use these vulnerabilities to crash Ethereal, perform DoS by CPU and disk space utilization or even execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running Ethereal, which could be the root user.

Workaround

For a temporary workaround you can disable all affected protocol dissectors by selecting Analyze->Enabled Protocols... and deselecting them from the list. However, it is strongly recommended to upgrade to the latest stable version.

Resolution

All ethereal users should upgrade to the latest version:

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-analyzer/ethereal-0.10.8"

References

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200412-15.xml

Concerns?

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to security@gentoo.org or alternatively, you may file a bug at https://bugs.gentoo.org.