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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2011-4607

Low
2.1/10

Summary

PuTTY 0.59 through 0.61 does not clear sensitive process memory when managing user replies that occur during keyboard-interactive authentication, which might allow local users to read login passwords by obtaining access to the process' memory.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • PARTIAL
  • NONE

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