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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2012-1699

Low
3.6/10

Summary

The ProcSetEventMask function in difs/events.c in the xfs font server for X.Org X11R6 through X11R6.6 and XFree86 before 3.3.3 calls the SendErrToClient function with a mask value instead of a pointer, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and crash) or obtain potentially sensitive information from memory via a SetEventMask request that triggers an invalid pointer dereference.

  • LOW
  • LOCAL
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • 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