James Ralston discovered that the sasl_encode64() function of cyrus-sasl2, a free library implementing the Simple Authentication and Security Layer, suffers from a missing null termination in certain situations. This causes several buffer overflows in situations where cyrus-sasl2 itself requires the string to be null terminated which can lead to denial of service or arbitrary code execution. Important notice (Quoting from US-CERT): While this patch will fix currently vulnerable code, it can cause non-vulnerable existing code to break. Here's a function prototype from include/saslutil.h to clarify my explanation: /* base64 encode * in -- input data * inlen -- input data length * out -- output buffer (will be NUL terminated) * outmax -- max size of output buffer * result: * outlen -- gets actual length of output buffer (optional) * * Returns SASL_OK on success, SASL_BUFOVER if result won't fit */ LIBSASL_API int sasl_encode64(const char *in, unsigned inlen, char *out, unsigned outmax, unsigned *outlen); Assume a scenario where calling code has been written in such a way that it calculates the exact size required for base64 encoding in advance, then allocates a buffer of that exact size, passing a pointer to the buffer into sasl_encode64() as *out. As long as this code does not anticipate that the buffer is NUL-terminated (does not call any string-handling functions like strlen(), for example) the code will work and it will not be vulnerable. Once this patch is applied, that same code will break because sasl_encode64() will begin to return SASL_BUFOVER. For the oldstable distribution (etch), this problem has been fixed in version 2.1.22.dfsg1-8+etch1 of cyrus-sasl2. For the stable distribution (lenny), this problem has been fixed in version 2.1.22.dfsg1-23+lenny1 of cyrus-sasl2 and cyrus-sasl2-heimdal. For the testing distribution (squeeze), this problem will be fixed soon. For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem has been fixed in version 2.1.23.dfsg1-1 of cyrus-sasl2 and cyrus-sasl2-heimdal. We recommend that you upgrade your cyrus-sasl2/cyrus-sasl2-heimdal packages.
James Ralston discovered that the sasl_encode64() function of cyrus-sasl2, a free library implementing the Simple Authentication and Security Layer, suffers from a missing null termination in certain situations. This causes several buffer overflows in situations where cyrus-sasl2 itself requires the string to be null terminated which can lead to denial of service or arbitrary code execution.
Important notice (Quoting from US-CERT): While this patch will fix currently vulnerable code, it can cause non-vulnerable existing code to break. Here's a function prototype from include/saslutil.h to clarify my explanation:
/* base64 encode * in -- input data * inlen -- input data length * out -- output buffer (will be NUL terminated) * outmax -- max size of output buffer * result: * outlen -- gets actual length of output buffer (optional) * * Returns SASL_OK on success, SASL_BUFOVER if result won't fit */ LIBSASL_API int sasl_encode64(const char *in, unsigned inlen, char *out, unsigned outmax, unsigned *outlen);
Assume a scenario where calling code has been written in such a way that it calculates the exact size required for base64 encoding in advance, then allocates a buffer of that exact size, passing a pointer to the buffer into sasl_encode64() as *out. As long as this code does not anticipate that the buffer is NUL-terminated (does not call any string-handling functions like strlen(), for example) the code will work and it will not be vulnerable.
Once this patch is applied, that same code will break because sasl_encode64() will begin to return SASL_BUFOVER.
For the oldstable distribution (etch), this problem has been fixed in version 2.1.22.dfsg1-8+etch4 of cyrus-sasl2.
For the stable distribution (lenny), this problem has been fixed in version 2.1.22.dfsg1-23+lenny1 of cyrus-sasl2 and cyrus-sasl2-heimdal.
For the testing distribution (squeeze), this problem will be fixed soon.
For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem has been fixed in version 2.1.23.dfsg1-1 of cyrus-sasl2 and cyrus-sasl2-heimdal.
We recommend that you upgrade your cyrus-sasl2/cyrus-sasl2-heimdal packages.
MD5 checksums of the listed files are available in the original advisory.
Vulmon