Format string vulnerability in packet-socks.c of the SOCKS dissector for Ethereal 0.8.7 through 0.9.9 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via SOCKS packets containing format string specifiers.

Georgi Guninski discovered a problem in ethereal, a network traffic analyzer. The program contains a format string vulnerability that could probably lead to execution of arbitrary code.

A vulnerability was discovered in Ethereal 0.9.9 and earlier that allows a remote attacker to use specially crafted SOCKS packets to cause a denial of service (DoS) and possibly execute arbitrary code.

A similar vulnerability also exists in the NTLMSSP code in Ethereal 0.9.9 and earlier, due to a heap-based buffer overflow.

The remote host is missing the patch for the advisory SUSE-SA:2003:019 (ethereal).


Ethereal is a GUI for analyzing and displaying network traffic.
Ethereal is vulnerable to a format string bug in it's SOCKS code and to a heap buffer overflow in it's NTLMSSP code.
These bugs can be abused to crash ethereal or maybe to execute arbitrary code on the machine running ethereal.

There is no temporary workaround known.

Please download the update package for your distribution and verify its integrity by the methods listed in section 3) of this announcement.
Then, install the package using the command 'rpm -Fhv file.rpm' to apply the update.

Updated Ethereal packages fixing a number of remotely exploitable security issues are now available.

Ethereal is a package designed for monitoring network traffic.

A number of security issues affect Ethereal. By exploiting these issues it may be possible to make Ethereal crash or run arbitrary code by injecting a purposefully malformed packet onto the wire, or by convincing someone to read a malformed packet trace file.

Ethereal 0.9.9 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via carefully crafted SOCKS packets. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2003-0081 to this issue.

A heap-based buffer overflow exists in the NTLMSSP code for Ethereal 0.9.9 and earlier. (CVE-2003-0159)

Multiple off-by-one vulnerabilities exist in Ethereal 0.9.11 and earlier in the AIM, GIOP Gryphon, OSPF, PPTP, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, Rsync, SMB, SMPP, and TSP dissectors, which do not properly use the tvb_get_nstringz and tvb_get_nstringz0 functions. (CVE-2003-0356)

Multiple integer overflow vulnerabilities exist in Ethereal 0.9.11 and earlier in the Mount and PPP dissectors. (CVE-2003-0357)

A vulnerability in the DCERPC dissector exists in Ethereal 0.9.12 and earlier, allowing remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via a certain NDR string. (CVE-2003-0428)

A possible buffer overflow vulnerability exists in Ethereal 0.9.12 and earlier, caused by invalid IPv4 or IPv6 prefix lengths and possibly triggering a buffer overflow. (CVE-2003-0429)

A vulnerability exists in Ethereal 0.9.12 and earlier, allowing remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via an invalid ASN.1 value. (CVE-2003-0430)

The tvb_get_nstringz0 function in Ethereal 0.9.12 and earlier does not properly handle a zero-length buffer size. (CVE-2003-0431)

Ethereal 0.9.12 and earlier does not handle certain strings properly in the BGP, WTP, DNS, 802.11, ISAKMP, WSP, CLNP, ISIS, and RMI dissectors. (CVE-2003-0432)

Users of Ethereal should update to these erratum packages containing Ethereal version 0.9.13, which are not vulnerable to these issues.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
15095	Debian DSA-258-1 : ethereal - format string vulnerability	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high
14035	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : ethereal (MDKSA-2003:051)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	high
13789	SUSE-SA:2003:019: ethereal	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	high
12373	RHEL 2.1 : ethereal (RHSA-2003:077)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	critical

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2003-0081

critical

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high

critical