International Components for Unicode: Multiple vulnerabilities

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Advisory Reference	GLSA 200803-20 / icu
Release Date	March 11, 2008
Latest Revision	March 12, 2008: 02
Impact	high
Exploitable	remote

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
dev-libs/icu	< 3.8.1-r1	>= 3.8.1-r1	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #208001

Synopsis

Two vulnerabilities have been discovered in the International Components for Unicode, possibly resulting in the remote execution of arbitrary code or a Denial of Service.

2. Impact Information

Background

International Components for Unicode is a set of C/C++ and Java libraries providing Unicode and Globalization support for software applications.

Description

Will Drewry (Google Security) reported a vulnerability in the regular expression engine when using back references to capture \0 characters (CVE-2007-4770). He also found that the backtracking stack size is not limited, possibly allowing for a heap-based buffer overflow (CVE-2007-4771).

Impact

A remote attacker could submit specially crafted regular expressions to an application using the library, possibly resulting in the remote execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the application or a Denial of Service.

3. Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All International Components for Unicode users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-libs/icu-3.8.1-r1"

4. References

Updated March 11, 2008

Summary: This is a Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

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