w3m through 0.5.3 is prone to an infinite recursion flaw in HTMLlineproc0 because the feed_table_block_tag function in table.c does not prevent a negative indent value.

There are packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities referenced in the following CVEs:

  - w3m through 0.5.3 does not properly handle temporary files when the ~/.w3m directory is unwritable, which
    allows a local attacker to craft a symlink attack to overwrite arbitrary files. (CVE-2018-6198)

  - w3m through 0.5.3 is prone to an infinite recursion flaw in HTMLlineproc0 because the feed_table_block_tag
    function in table.c does not prevent a negative indent value. (CVE-2018-6196)

  - w3m through 0.5.3 is prone to a NULL pointer dereference flaw in formUpdateBuffer in form.c.
    (CVE-2018-6197)

  - There is an out-of-bounds write in checkType located in etc.c in w3m 0.5.3. It can be triggered by sending
    a crafted HTML file to the w3m binary. It allows an attacker to cause Denial of Service or possibly have
    unspecified other impact. (CVE-2022-38223)

There are packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities referenced in the following CVEs:

  - w3m through 0.5.3 is prone to an infinite recursion flaw in HTMLlineproc0 because the feed_table_block_tag
    function in table.c does not prevent a negative indent value. (CVE-2018-6196)

  - w3m through 0.5.3 is prone to a NULL pointer dereference flaw in formUpdateBuffer in form.c.
    (CVE-2018-6197)

  - w3m through 0.5.3 does not properly handle temporary files when the ~/.w3m directory is unwritable, which
    allows a local attacker to craft a symlink attack to overwrite arbitrary files. (CVE-2018-6198)

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

  - w3m through 0.5.3 is prone to an infinite recursion flaw in HTMLlineproc0 because the feed_table_block_tag     function in table.c does not prevent a negative indent value. (CVE-2018-6196)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Two issues have been found in w3m, WWW browsable pager with excellent tables/frames support.

One issue is related to a stack overflow, the other one is a fix for a NULL pointer dereference.

Brief introduction

CVE-2018-6196

Description

CVE-2018-6197

Description

For Debian 8 'Jessie', these problems have been fixed in version 0.5.3-19+deb8u3.

We recommend that you upgrade your w3m packages.

NOTE: Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the DLA security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

This update for w3m fixes the following issues :

Security issues fixed :

  - CVE-2018-6196: Prevent infinite recursion in     HTMLlineproc0 caused by the feed_table_block_tag     function which did not prevent a negative indent value     (bsc#1077559)

  - CVE-2018-6197: Prevent NULL pointer dereference in     formUpdateBuffer (bsc#1077568)

  - CVE-2018-6198: w3m did not properly handle temporary     files when the ~/.w3m directory is unwritable, which     allowed a local attacker to craft a symlink attack to     overwrite arbitrary files (bsc#1077572)

This update was imported from the SUSE:SLE-12:Update update project.

This update for w3m fixes several issues.

These security issues were fixed :

CVE-2018-6196: Prevent infinite recursion in HTMLlineproc0 caused by the feed_table_block_tag function which did not prevent a negative indent value (bsc#1077559)

CVE-2018-6197: Prevent NULL pointer dereference in formUpdateBuffer (bsc#1077568)

CVE-2018-6198: w3m did not properly handle temporary files when the ~/.w3m directory is unwritable, which allowed a local attacker to craft a symlink attack to overwrite arbitrary files (bsc#1077572)

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the SUSE security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Rebase to latest upstream gitrev 20180125 and Security fix for CVE-2018-6196, CVE-2018-6197, CVE-2018-6198

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora update system website.
Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Tatsuya Kinoshita reports :

CVE-2018-6196 * table.c: Prevent negative indent value in feed_table_block_tag().

CVE-2018-6197 * form.c: Prevent invalid columnPos() call in formUpdateBuffer().

CVE-2018-6198 * config.h.dist, config.h.in, configure, configure.ac, main.c, rc.c: Make temporary directory safely when ~/.w3m is unwritable.

The remote Ubuntu 14.04 LTS / 16.04 LTS host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the USN-3555-1 advisory.

    It was discovered that w3m incorrectly handled certain inputs. An attacker could possibly use this to     cause a denial of service. (CVE-2018-6196, CVE-2018-6197)

    It was discovered that w3m incorrectly handled temporary files. An attacker could possibly use this to     overwrite arbitrary files. (CVE-2018-6198)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
427838	Alpine: multiple w3m packages: security update to 0.5.3_git20241203-r0	Tenable Cloud Security	Alpine Linux Local Security Checks	high
427838	Alpine: multiple w3m packages: security update to 0.5.3_git20241203-r0	Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security	Alpine Linux Local Security Checks	high
427525	Alpine: multiple w3m packages: security update to 0.5.3.20180125-r0	Tenable Cloud Security	Alpine Linux Local Security Checks	medium
427525	Alpine: multiple w3m packages: security update to 0.5.3.20180125-r0	Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security	Alpine Linux Local Security Checks	medium
222622	Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2018-6196	Nessus	Misc.	high
400734	Alpine: multiple w3m packages: security update to 0.5.3-r2 (deprecated)	Tenable Cloud Security	Alpine Linux Local Security Checks	medium
400734	Alpine: multiple w3m packages: security update to 0.5.3-r2 (deprecated)	Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security	Alpine Linux Local Security Checks	medium
136204	Debian DLA-2195-1 : w3m security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high
123772	openSUSE Security Update : w3m (openSUSE-2019-1142)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	medium
123450	SUSE SLED12 / SLES12 Security Update : w3m (SUSE-SU-2019:0776-1)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	medium
106698	Fedora 27 : w3m (2018-0ad6e73ac0)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
106600	FreeBSD : w3m - multiple vulnerabilities (e72d5bf5-07a0-11e8-8248-0021ccb9e74d)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	medium
106581	Ubuntu 14.04 LTS / 16.04 LTS : w3m vulnerabilities (USN-3555-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2018-6196

high

Tenable Plugins

high

high

medium

medium

high

medium

medium

high

medium

medium

medium

medium

medium