Ethereal: Buffer overflow in OSPF protocol dissector — GLSA 200512-06

Ethereal is missing bounds checking in the OSPF protocol dissector that could lead to abnormal program termination or the execution of arbitrary code.

Affected packages

net-analyzer/ethereal on all architectures
Affected versions < 0.10.13-r2
Unaffected versions >= 0.10.13-r2

Background

Ethereal is a feature-rich network protocol analyzer. It provides protocol analyzers for various network flows, including one for Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) Interior Gateway Protocol.

Description

iDEFENSE reported a possible overflow due to the lack of bounds checking in the dissect_ospf_v3_address_prefix() function, part of the OSPF protocol dissector.

Impact

An attacker might be able to craft a malicious network flow that would crash Ethereal. It may be possible, though unlikely, to exploit this flaw to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running Ethereal, which could be the root user.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Ethereal users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-analyzer/ethereal-0.10.13-r2"

References

Release date
December 14, 2005

Latest revision
December 14, 2005: 01

Severity
high

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries