[Full-Disclosure] Advisory 06/2004: libneon date parsing vulnerability

From: Stefan Esser (s.esser_at_e-matters.de)
Date: 05/19/04

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    To: full-disclosure@lists.netsys.com, bugtraq@securityfocus.com
    Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 08:36:42 +0200
    
    

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                               e-matters GmbH
                              www.e-matters.de

                          -= Security Advisory =-

         Advisory: libneon date parsing vulnerability
     Release Date: 2004/05/19
    Last Modified: 2004/05/19
           Author: Stefan Esser [s.esser@e-matters.de]

      Application: libneon <= 0.24.5
         Severity: A vulnerability within a date parsing function
                   allows arbitrary code execution
             Risk: Medium
    Vendor Status: Vendor is releasing a bugfixed version.
        Reference: http://security.e-matters.de/advisories/062004.html

    Overview:

       Quote from: http://www.webdav.org/neon
       
       "neon is an HTTP and WebDAV client library, with a C interface. Featuring:

        * High-level interface to HTTP and WebDAV methods (PUT, GET, HEAD etc)
        * Low-level interface to HTTP request handling, to allow implementing...
        * persistent connections
        * RFC2617 basic and digest authentication (including auth-int, md5-sess)
        * Proxy support (including basic/digest authentication)
        * SSL/TLS support using OpenSSL (including client certificate support)
        * Generic WebDAV 207 XML response handling mechanism
        * XML parsing using the expat or libxml parsers
        * Easy generation of error messages from 207 error responses
        * WebDAV resource manipulation: MOVE, COPY, DELETE, MKCOL.
        * WebDAV metadata support: set and remove properties, query any set...
        * autoconf macros supplied for easily embedding neon directly inside..."
        
       A vulnerability within a libneon date parsing function could cause a
       heap overflow which could lead to remote code execution, depending on
       the application using libneon.
       
       OpenOffice and Subversion *DO NOT* use this function and are therefore
       not vulnerable to THIS problem.
       
       
    Details:
       
       While scanning the libneon source code for common programming errors
       an unsafe usage of sscanf() was discovered within one of the date
       parsing functions.
       
       When a special crafted date string is passed to the ne_rfc1036_parse()
       it may trigger a sscanf() string overflow into static heap variables.
       Exploitability heavily depends on the application linked against neon
       but is considered trivial in cases where an out-of-memory condition
       can be triggered, because the overflowing variable is placed infront
       of the libneon out-of-memory callback function pointer.
       
       Please notice that your application could be vulnerable even if you
       do not use ne_rfc1036_parse() directly, because its functionality
       is used by several higher level API functions.

    Proof of Concept:

       e-matters is not going to release an exploit for this vulnerability to
       the public.
       

    Disclosure Timeline:

       02. May 2004 - Neon developers were contacted by email
       04. May 2004 - Joe Orton has fixed the bug within neon and waits
                      for the public disclosure date
       19. May 2004 - Coordinated Public Disclosure
       
       
    CVE Information:

       The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has
       assigned the name CAN-2004-0398 to this issue.

    Recommendation:

       Because Subversion and OpenOffice, which are the most important libneon
       users, are not using the vulnerable function the issue is rated with a
       medium severity. Nevertheless upgrading your neon version is recommended
       because other applications could be vulnerable and could expose the
       vulnerable function to the outside world.
       
       
    GPG-Key:

       http://security.e-matters.de/gpg_key.asc
        
       pub 1024D/3004C4BC 2004-05-17 e-matters GmbH - Securityteam
       Key fingerprint = 3FFB 7C86 7BE8 6981 D1DA A71A 6F7D 572D 3004 C4BC

    Copyright 2004 Stefan Esser. All rights reserved.

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    -- 
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Stefan Esser                                        s.esser@e-matters.de
     e-matters Security                         http://security.e-matters.de/
     GPG-Key                gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-key 0xCF6CAE69 
     Key fingerprint       B418 B290 ACC0 C8E5 8292  8B72 D6B0 7704 CF6C AE69
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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  • Next message: Stefan Esser: "[Full-Disclosure] Advisory 08/2004: Subversion remote vulnerability"

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