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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2014-3158

Severity High
Score 7.5/10

Summary

Integer overflow in the getword function in options.c in pppd in Paul's PPP Package (ppp) before 2.4.7 allows attackers to "access privileged options" via a long word in an options file, which triggers a heap-based buffer overflow that "[corrupts] security-relevant variables."

  • 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