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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2017-16368

High
8.8/10

Summary

An issue was discovered in Adobe Acrobat and Reader: 2017.012.20098 and earlier versions, 2017.011.30066 and earlier versions, 2015.006.30355 and earlier versions, and 11.0.22 and earlier versions. This vulnerability leads to a stack-based buffer overflow condition in the internal Unicode string manipulation module. It is triggered by an invalid PDF file, where a crafted Unicode string causes an out of bounds memory access of a stack allocated buffer, due to improper checks when manipulating an offset of a pointer to the buffer. Attackers can exploit the vulnerability and achieve arbitrary code execution if they can effectively control the accessible memory.

  • 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