Skip to main content

Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2017-13089

Severity High
Score 8.8/10

Summary

The http.c:skip_short_body() function is called in some circumstances, such as when processing redirects. When the response is sent chunked in wget before 1.19.2, the chunk parser uses strtol() to read each chunk's length, but doesn't check that the chunk length is a non-negative number. The code then tries to skip the chunk in pieces of 512 bytes by using the MIN() macro, but ends up passing the negative chunk length to connect.c:fd_read(). As fd_read() takes an int argument, the high 32 bits of the chunk length are discarded, leaving fd_read() with a completely attacker controlled length argument.

  • LOW
  • NETWORK
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • REQUIRED
  • NONE
  • 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