Gerhard Rieger reports:
Socat security advisory 6 - Possible DoS with fork
Overview socats signal handler implementations are not async-signal-safe and can cause crash or freeze of socat processes
Vulnerability Id: (pending)
Severity: Low
Details Socats signal handler implementations are not asnyc-signal-safe. When a signal is triggered while the process is within a non async-signal-safe function the signal handler will call a non sync-signal-safe function too. POSIX specifies the behaviour in this situation as undefined. Dependend on involved functions, libraries, and operating system, the process can continue, freeze, or crash. Mostly this issue occurs when socat is in listening mode with fork option and a couple of child processes terminate at the same time.
Testcase none
Affected versions 1.0.0.0 - 1.7.2.4 2.0.0-b1 - 2.0.0-b7
Not affected or corrected versions 1.7.3.0 and later 2.0.0-b8 (to be released) and later
Workaround none
Download The updated sources can be downloaded from:
http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/download/socat-1.7.3.0.tar.gz
Credits Credits to Peter Lobsinger
Heap-based buffer overflow in the xioscanreadline function in xio-readline.c in socat 1.4.0.0 through 1.7.2.0 and 2.0.0-b1 through 2.0.0-b4 allows local users to execute arbitrary code via the READLINE address.
Socat upstream, released an advisory: [1] http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/contrib/socat-secadv2.html
describing a stack overflow flaw, present in Socat bidirectional data relay, when processing command line arguments (address specifications, host names, file names), longer than 512 bytes. An attacker, able to inject data into sockat's command line (potentially remotely via CGI script invocation), could use this flaw to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the socat process.
References: [2] http://bugs.gentoo.org/showbug.cgi?id=330785
Upstream patch against v1.7.2: [3] http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/download/socat-1.7.1.3.patch
Credit: Issue discovered and reported by Felix Gröbert of Google Security Team
CVE Request: [4] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2010/08/02/3