CVE-2015-5073: Buffer Overflow

Published Jun 30, 2015
·
Updated

Heap-based buffer overflow in the findfixedlength function in pcrecompile.c in PCRE before 8.38 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) or obtain sensitive information from heap memory and possibly bypass the ASLR protection mechanism via a crafted regular expression with an excess closing parenthesis.

Other sources

Quoting http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/06/26/1:

""" PCRE is a regular expression C library inspired by the regular expression capabilities in the Perl programming language. The PCRE library is incorporated into a number of prominent programs, such as Adobe Flash, Apache, Nginx, PHP.

PCRE library is prone to a vulnerability which leads to Heap Overflow. During subpattern calculation of a malformed regular expression, an offset that is used as an array index is fully controlled and can be large enough so that unexpected heap memory regions are accessed. One could at least exploit this issue to read objects nearby of the affected application's memory. Such information discloure may also be used to bypass memory protection method such as ASLR.

Reference: https://bugs.exim.org/showbug.cgi?id=1651 """

The patch is available in the upstream bug:

https://bugs.exim.org/showbug.cgi?id=1651

Red Hat

Affected Software

4 affected componentsFixes available
redhat/pcre<8.38
8.38
IBM PowerKVM=2.1
IBM PowerKVM=3.1
pcre pcre<=8.37

Event History

Dec 13, 2016
CVE Published
via MITRE·04:00 PM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·04:00 PM
Description

Frequently Asked Questions

1

What is the severity of CVE-2015-5073?

CVE-2015-5073 has a medium severity rating due to the potential for denial of service and information disclosure.

2

How do I fix CVE-2015-5073?

To fix CVE-2015-5073, update PCRE to version 8.38 or later.

3

What does CVE-2015-5073 affect?

CVE-2015-5073 affects the PCRE library versions prior to 8.38.

4

What type of vulnerability is CVE-2015-5073?

CVE-2015-5073 is a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability.

5

Can CVE-2015-5073 bypass ASLR?

Yes, CVE-2015-5073 can potentially bypass the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) protection mechanism.

Contact

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