GLSA 200711-28: Perl: Buffer overflow

http://security.gentoo.org/

Severity:	normal
Title:	Perl: Buffer overflow
Date:	11/19/2007
Bugs:	#198196
ID:	200711-28

Synopsis

A buffer overflow in the Regular Expression engine in Perl possibly allows for the execution of arbitrary code.

Background

Perl is a stable, cross-platform programming language created by Larry Wall.

Affected packages

Package	Vulnerable	Unaffected	Architecture(s)
dev-lang/perl	< 5.8.8-r4	>= 5.8.8-r4	All supported architectures

Description

Tavis Ormandy and Will Drewry (Google Security Team) discovered a heap-based buffer overflow in the Regular Expression engine (regcomp.c) that occurs when switching from byte to Unicode (UTF-8) characters in a regular expression.

Impact

A remote attacker could either entice a user to compile a specially crafted regular expression or actively compile it in case the script accepts remote input of regular expressions, possibly leading to the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running Perl.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Perl users should upgrade to the latest version:

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-lang/perl-5.8.8-r4"

References

CVE-2007-5116

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200711-28.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.