Debian DSA-4016-1 : irssi - security update

critical Nessus Plugin ID 104400

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Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security-related update.

Description

Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in Irssi, a terminal based IRC client. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

- CVE-2017-10965 Brian 'geeknik' Carpenter of Geeknik Labs discovered that Irssi does not properly handle receiving messages with invalid time stamps. A malicious IRC server can take advantage of this flaw to cause Irssi to crash, resulting in a denial of service.

- CVE-2017-10966 Brian 'geeknik' Carpenter of Geeknik Labs discovered that Irssi is susceptible to a use-after-free flaw triggered while updating the internal nick list. A malicious IRC server can take advantage of this flaw to cause Irssi to crash, resulting in a denial of service.

- CVE-2017-15227 Joseph Bisch discovered that while waiting for the channel synchronisation, Irssi may incorrectly fail to remove destroyed channels from the query list, resulting in use after free conditions when updating the state later on. A malicious IRC server can take advantage of this flaw to cause Irssi to crash, resulting in a denial of service.

- CVE-2017-15228 Hanno Boeck reported that Irssi does not properly handle installing themes with unterminated colour formatting sequences, leading to a denial of service if a user is tricked into installing a specially crafted theme.

- CVE-2017-15721 Joseph Bisch discovered that Irssi does not properly handle incorrectly formatted DCC CTCP messages. A remote attacker can take advantage of this flaw to cause Irssi to crash, resulting in a denial of service.

- CVE-2017-15722 Joseph Bisch discovered that Irssi does not properly verify Safe channel IDs. A malicious IRC server can take advantage of this flaw to cause Irssi to crash, resulting in a denial of service.

- CVE-2017-15723 Joseph Bisch reported that Irssi does not properly handle overlong nicks or targets resulting in a NULL pointer dereference when splitting the message and leading to a denial of service.

Solution

Upgrade the irssi packages.

For the oldstable distribution (jessie), these problems have been fixed in version 0.8.17-1+deb8u5.

For the stable distribution (stretch), these problems have been fixed in version 1.0.2-1+deb9u3. CVE-2017-10965 and CVE-2017-10966 were already fixed in an earlier point release.

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 104400

File Name: debian_DSA-4016.nasl

Version: 3.5

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: Debian Local Security Checks

Published: 11/6/2017

Updated: 11/14/2025

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 5.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 5.5

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2017-10966

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Temporal Score: 8.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:9.0, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:irssi, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:8.0

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/Debian/release, Host/Debian/dpkg-l

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 11/3/2017

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2017-10965, CVE-2017-10966, CVE-2017-15227, CVE-2017-15228, CVE-2017-15721, CVE-2017-15722, CVE-2017-15723

DSA: 4016

Detections

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