DSA-2861-1 file -- denial of service

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2014-1943  

It was discovered that file, a file type classification tool, contains a flaw in the handling of indirect magic rules in the libmagic library, which leads to an infinite recursion when trying to determine the file type of certain files. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project ID CVE-2014-1943 has been assigned to identify this flaw. Additionally, other well-crafted files might result in long computation times (while using 100% CPU) and overlong results. For the oldstable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in version 5.04-5+squeeze3. For the stable distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 5.11-2+deb7u1. For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem will be fixed soon. We recommend that you upgrade your file packages.

Debian Security Advisory

DSA-2861-1 file -- denial of service

Date Reported:
16 Feb 2014
Affected Packages:
file
Vulnerable:
Yes
Security database references:
In the Debian bugtracking system: Bug 738832.
In Mitre's CVE dictionary: CVE-2014-1943.
More information:

It was discovered that file, a file type classification tool, contains a flaw in the handling of indirect magic rules in the libmagic library, which leads to an infinite recursion when trying to determine the file type of certain files. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project ID CVE-2014-1943 has been assigned to identify this flaw. Additionally, other well-crafted files might result in long computation times (while using 100% CPU) and overlong results.

For the oldstable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in version 5.04-5+squeeze3.

For the stable distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 5.11-2+deb7u1.

For the unstable distribution (sid), this problem will be fixed soon.

We recommend that you upgrade your file packages.