Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer
CVE-2017-1000254
Summary
libcurl may read outside of a heap allocated buffer when doing FTP. When libcurl connects to an FTP server and successfully logs in (anonymous or not), it asks the server for the current directory with the `PWD` command. The server then responds with a 257 response containing the path, inside double quotes. The returned path name is then kept by libcurl for subsequent uses. Due to a flaw in the string parser for this directory name, a directory name passed like this but without a closing double quote would lead to libcurl not adding a trailing NUL byte to the buffer holding the name. When libcurl would then later access the string, it could read beyond the allocated heap buffer and crash or wrongly access data beyond the buffer, thinking it was part of the path. A malicious server could abuse this fact and effectively prevent libcurl-based clients to work with it - the PWD command is always issued on new FTP connections and the mistake has a high chance of causing a segfault. The simple fact that this has issue remained undiscovered for this long could suggest that malformed PWD responses are rare in benign servers. We are not aware of any exploit of this flaw. This bug was introduced in commit [415d2e7cb7](https://github.com/curl/curl/commit/415d2e7cb7), March 2005. In libcurl version 7.56.0, the parser always zero terminates the string but also rejects it if not terminated properly with a final double quote.
- 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