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