Snort: Denial of service — GLSA 200702-03

Snort contains a vulnerability in the rule matching algorithm that could result in a Denial of Service.

Affected packages

net-analyzer/snort on all architectures
Affected versions < 2.6.1.2
Unaffected versions >= 2.6.1.2

Background

Snort is a widely deployed intrusion detection program.

Description

Randy Smith, Christian Estan and Somesh Jha discovered that the rule matching algorithm of Snort can be exploited in a way known as a "backtracking attack" to perform numerous time-consuming operations.

Impact

A remote attacker could send specially crafted network packets, which would result in the cessation of the detections and the consumption of the CPU resources.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Snort users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-analyzer/snort-2.6.1.2"

References

Release date
February 13, 2007

Latest revision
February 13, 2007: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries