Pidgin: Multiple vulnerabilities

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Updated January 20, 2009

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Advisory Reference	GLSA 200901-13 / pidgin
Release Date	January 20, 2009
Latest Revision	January 20, 2009: 01
Impact	normal
Exploitable	remote

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
net-im/pidgin	< 2.5.1	>= 2.5.1	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #230045, #234135

Synopsis

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Pidgin, allowing for remote arbitrary code execution, Denial of Service and service spoofing.

2. Impact Information

Background

Pidgin (formerly Gaim) is an instant messaging client for a variety of instant messaging protocols. It is based on the libpurple instant messaging library.

Description

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Pidgin and the libpurple library:

A participant to the TippingPoint ZDI reported multiple integer overflows in the msn_slplink_process_msg() function in the MSN protocol implementation (CVE-2008-2927).
Juan Pablo Lopez Yacubian is credited for reporting a use-after-free flaw in msn_slplink_process_msg() in the MSN protocol implementation (CVE-2008-2955).
The included UPnP server does not limit the size of data to be downloaded for UPnP service discovery, according to a report by Andrew Hunt and Christian Grothoff (CVE-2008-2957).
Josh Triplett discovered that the NSS plugin for libpurple does not properly verify SSL certificates (CVE-2008-3532).

Impact

A remote attacker could send specially crafted messages or files using the MSN protocol which could result in the execution of arbitrary code or crash Pidgin. NOTE: Successful exploitation might require the victim's interaction. Furthermore, an attacker could conduct man-in-the-middle attacks to obtain sensitive information using bad certificates and cause memory and disk resources to exhaust.

3. Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Pidgin users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-im/pidgin-2.5.1"

4. References