The vulnerable system is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed below, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed “remotely exploitable” and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers). An example of a network attack is an attacker causing a denial of service by sending a specially crafted TCP packet across a wide area network (e.g., CVE-2004-0230).
Attack Complexity
Low
AC
The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
Privileges Required
None
PR
The attacker is unauthenticated prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files of the vulnerable system to carry out an attack.
User Interaction
None
UI
The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker. Examples include: a remote attacker is able to send packets to a target system a locally authenticated attacker executes code to elevate privileges
Scope
Unchanged
S
An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In the case of a vulnerability in a virtualized environment, an exploited vulnerability in one guest instance would not affect neighboring guest instances.
Confidentiality
None
C
There is no impact on the confidentiality of the system; the attacker does not gain the ability to read any data.
Integrity
None
I
There is no impact on the integrity of the system; the attacker does not gain the ability to modify any files or information on the target system.
Availability
High
A
There is a total shutdown of the affected resource. The attacker can deny access to the system or data, potentially causing significant loss to the organization.
UW-IMAP Netmailbox Name Parsing Buffer Overflow Vulnerability
iDEFENSE Security Advisory 10.04.05
www.idefense.com/application/poi/display?id=313&type=vulnerabilities
October 4, 2005
I. BACKGROUND
UW-IMAP is a popular free IMAP service for Linux and UNIX systems and
is distributed with various Linux distributions. More information can
be found at the vendor website:
http://www.washington.edu/imap/
II. DESCRIPTION
Remote exploitation of a buffer overflow vulnerability in the University
of Washington's IMAP Server (UW-IMAP) allows attackers to execute
arbitrary code.
The vulnerability specifically exists due to insufficient bounds
checking on user-supplied values. The mail_valid_net_parse_work()
function in src/c-client/mail.c is responsible for obtaining and
validating the specified mailbox name from user-supplied data. An error
in the parsing of supplied mailbox names will continue to copy memory
after a " character has been parsed until another " character is found
as shown here:
long mail_valid_net_parse_work (char *name,NETMBX *mb,char *service)
{
int i,j;
#define MAILTMPLEN 1024 /* size of a temporary buffer */
char c,*s,*t,*v,tmp[MAILTMPLEN],arg[MAILTMPLEN];
...snip...
if (t - v) { /* any switches or port specification? */
1] strncpy (t = tmp,v,j); /* copy it */
tmp[j] = '