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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2016-2146

High
7.5/10

Summary

The am_read_post_data function in mod_auth_mellon before 0.11.1 does not limit the amount of data read, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (worker process crash, web server deadlock, or memory consumption) via a large amount of POST data.

  • LOW
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • 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