Skip to main content

Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2005-3191

Medium
5.1/10

Summary

Multiple heap-based buffer overflows in the (1) DCTStream::readProgressiveSOF and (2) DCTStream::readBaselineSOF functions in the DCT stream parsing code (Stream.cc) in xpdf 3.01 and earlier, as used in products such as (a) Poppler, (b) teTeX, (c) KDE kpdf, (d) pdftohtml, (e) KOffice KWord, (f) CUPS, and (g) libextractor allow user-assisted attackers to cause a denial of service (heap corruption) and possibly execute arbitrary code via a crafted PDF file with an out-of-range number of components (numComps), which is used as an array index.

  • HIGH
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • PARTIAL
  • PARTIAL
  • PARTIAL

CWE-119 - Buffer Overflow

Buffer overflow attacks involve data transit and operations exceeding the restricted memory buffer, thereby corrupting or overwriting data in adjacent memory locations. Such overflow allows the attacker to run arbitrary code or manipulate the existing code to cause privilege escalation, data breach, denial of service, system crash and even complete system compromise. Given that languages such as C and C++ lack default safeguards against overwriting or accessing data in their memory, applications utilizing these languages are most susceptible to buffer overflows attacks.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published