CVE-2010-2643: Integer Overflow

An integer overflow vulnerability was found in the parser for TFM font files, which are used for rendering DVI files, in the GNOME evince document viewer that can lead to local or remote code execution. Due to insufficient checks on the value of an integer used as the size for a memory allocation, it's possible to write data beyond the bounds of the allocated memory and overwrite a function pointer, leading to code execution.

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures assigned an identifier CVE-2010-2643 to this issue.

The vulnerability is present in the code that handles loading of fonts used by DVI files.To exploit you need two files, a DVI file and the malicious font. The vulnerability is triggered not only by opening the document in evince, but also by browsing to a folder which contains the malicious files, where evince thumbnailer will load the malicious file to generate a thumbnail for it.

Acknowledgements:

Red Hat would like to thank the Evince development team for reporting this issue. Upstream acknowledges Jon Larimer of IBM X-Force as the original reporter.