GLSA 200512-06: Ethereal: Buffer overflow in OSPF protocol dissector

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	high
Title:	Ethereal: Buffer overflow in OSPF protocol dissector
Date:	12/14/2005
Bugs:	#115030
ID:	200512-06

Synopsis

Ethereal is missing bounds checking in the OSPF protocol dissector that could lead to abnormal program termination or the execution of arbitrary code.

Background

Ethereal is a feature-rich network protocol analyzer. It provides protocol analyzers for various network flows, including one for Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) Interior Gateway Protocol.

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
net-analyzer/ethereal	< 0.10.13-r2	>= 0.10.13-r2	All supported architectures

Description

iDEFENSE reported a possible overflow due to the lack of bounds checking in the dissect_ospf_v3_address_prefix() function, part of the OSPF protocol dissector.

Impact

An attacker might be able to craft a malicious network flow that would crash Ethereal. It may be possible, though unlikely, to exploit this flaw to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running Ethereal, which could be the root user.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Ethereal users should upgrade to the latest version:

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-analyzer/ethereal-0.10.13-r2"

References

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200512-06.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.