Perl: Buffer overflow

1.  Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Version Information

Related bugreports: #198196

Synopsis

A buffer overflow in the Regular Expression engine in Perl possibly allows for the execution of arbitrary code.

2.  Impact Information

Background

Perl is a stable, cross-platform programming language created by Larry Wall.

Description

Tavis Ormandy and Will Drewry (Google Security Team) discovered a heap-based buffer overflow in the Regular Expression engine (regcomp.c) that occurs when switching from byte to Unicode (UTF-8) characters in a regular expression.

Impact

A remote attacker could either entice a user to compile a specially crafted regular expression or actively compile it in case the script accepts remote input of regular expressions, possibly leading to the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running Perl.

3.  Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Perl users should upgrade to the latest version:

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-lang/perl-5.8.8-r4"

4.  References

• CVE-2007-5116