Ethereal 0.9.12 and earlier does not handle certain strings properly, with unknown consequences, in the (1) BGP, (2) WTP, (3) DNS, (4) 802.11, (5) ISAKMP, (6) WSP, (7) CLNP, (8) ISIS, and (9) RMI dissectors.

Several of the packet dissectors in ethereal contain string handling bugs which could be exploited using a maliciously crafted packet to cause ethereal to consume excessive amounts of memory, crash, or execute arbitrary code.

These vulnerabilities were announced in the following Ethereal security advisory :

Ethereal 0.9.4 in Debian 3.0 (woody) is affected by most of the problems described in the advisory, including :

  - The DCERPC dissector could try to allocate too much     memory while trying to decode an NDR string.
  - Bad IPv4 or IPv6 prefix lengths could cause an overflow     in the OSI dissector.

  - The tvb_get_nstringz0() routine incorrectly handled a     zero-length buffer size.

  - The BGP, WTP, DNS, 802.11, ISAKMP, WSP, CLNP, and ISIS     dissectors handled strings improperly.

The following problems do not affect this version :

  - The SPNEGO dissector could segfault while parsing an     invalid ASN.1 value.
  - The RMI dissector handled strings improperly

as these modules are not present.

A number of string handling bugs were found in the packet dissectors in ethereal that can be exploited using specially crafted packets to cause ethereal to consume excessive amounts of memory, crash, or even execute arbitrary code.

These vulnerabilities have been fixed upsteam in ethereal 0.9.13 and all users are encouraged to upgrade.

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
15161	Debian DSA-324-1 : ethereal - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
14053	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : ethereal (MDKSA-2003:070)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	critical
12373	RHEL 2.1 : ethereal (RHSA-2003:077)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	critical

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2003-0432

high

Tenable Plugins

critical

critical

critical