RAR: Format string and buffer overflow vulnerabilities — GLSA 200511-10

RAR contains a format string error and a buffer overflow vulnerability that may be used to execute arbitrary code.

Affected packages

Background

RAR is a powerful archive manager that can decompress RAR, ZIP and other files, and can create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.

Description

Tan Chew Keong reported about two vulnerabilities found in RAR:

• A format string error exists when displaying a diagnostic error message that informs the user of an invalid filename in an UUE/XXE encoded file.
• Some boundary errors in the processing of malicious ACE archives can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow.

Impact

A remote attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities by enticing a user to:

• decode a specially crafted UUE/XXE file, or
• extract a malicious ACE archive containing a file with an overly long filename.

When the user performs these actions, the arbitrary code of the attacker's choice will be executed.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-arch/rar-3.5.1"

References

• RAR Release Notes
• Secunia Research 11/10/2005

Release date
November 13, 2005

Latest revision
November 13, 2005: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries

• 111926