Ethereal: Multiple vulnerabilities

Security Team Contact Address

Updated December 19, 2004

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Advisory Reference	GLSA 200412-15 / Ethereal
Release Date	December 19, 2004
Latest Revision	December 19, 2004: 01
Impact	high
Exploitable	remote

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
net-analyzer/ethereal	< 0.10.8	>= 0.10.8	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #74443

Synopsis

Multiple vulnerabilities exist in Ethereal, which may allow an attacker to run arbitrary code, crash the program or perform DoS by CPU and disk utilization.

2. Impact Information

Background

Ethereal is a feature rich network protocol analyzer.

Description

There are multiple vulnerabilities in versions of Ethereal earlier than 0.10.8, including:

Bug in DICOM dissection discovered by Bing could make Ethereal crash (CAN 2004-1139).
An invalid RTP timestamp could make Ethereal hang and create a large temporary file (CAN 2004-1140).
The HTTP dissector could access previously-freed memory (CAN 2004-1141).
Brian Caswell discovered that an improperly formatted SMB could make Ethereal hang (CAN 2004-1142).

Impact

An attacker might be able to use these vulnerabilities to crash Ethereal, perform DoS by CPU and disk space utilization or even execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running Ethereal, which could be the root user.

3. Resolution Information

Workaround

For a temporary workaround you can disable all affected protocol dissectors by selecting Analyze->Enabled Protocols... and deselecting them from the list. However, it is strongly recommended to upgrade to the latest stable version.

Resolution

All ethereal users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-analyzer/ethereal-0.10.8"

4. References