Skip to main content

Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2008-2935

Severity High
Score 7.5/10

Summary

Multiple heap-based buffer overflows in the rc4 (1) encryption (aka exsltCryptoRc4EncryptFunction) and (2) decryption (aka exsltCryptoRc4DecryptFunction) functions in crypto.c in libexslt in libxslt 1.1.8 through 1.1.24 allow context-dependent attackers to execute arbitrary code via an XML file containing a long string as "an argument in the XSL input."

  • LOW
  • 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