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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2009-2404

High
9.3/10

Summary

Heap-based buffer overflow in a regular-expression parser in Mozilla Network Security Services (NSS) before 3.12.3, as used in Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Evolution, Pidgin, and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), allows remote SSL servers to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a long domain name in the subject's Common Name (CN) field of an X.509 certificate, related to the cert_TestHostName function.

  • MEDIUM
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • COMPLETE
  • COMPLETE
  • COMPLETE

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