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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2012-6711

High
7/10

Summary

A heap-based buffer overflow exists in GNU Bash before 4.3 when wide characters, not supported by the current locale set in the LC_CTYPE environment variable, are printed through the echo built-in function. A local attacker, who can provide data to print through the "echo -e" built-in function, may use this flaw to crash a script or execute code with the privileges of the bash process. This occurs because ansicstr() in lib/sh/strtrans.c mishandles u32cconv().

  • HIGH
  • LOCAL
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • HIGH
  • HIGH

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