Gentoo Linux Advisory: Ethereal

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Gentoo Linux Security Advisory GLSA 200407-08

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http://security.gentoo.org/

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Severity: High
Title: Ethereal: Multiple security problems
Date: July 09, 2004
Bugs: #56423
ID: 200407-08

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Synopsis

Multiple vulnerabilities including one buffer overflow exist in
Ethereal, which may allow an attacker to run arbitrary code or
crash the program.

Background

Ethereal is a feature rich network protocol analyzer.

Affected packages

Description

There are multiple vulnerabilities in versions of Ethereal
earlier than 0.10.5, including:

• In some cases the iSNS dissector could cause Ethereal to
  abort.
• If there was no policy name for a handle for SMB SID snooping
  it could cause a crash.
• A malformed or missing community string could cause the SNMP
  dissector to crash.

Impact

An attacker could use these vulnerabilities to crash Ethereal or
even execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user
running Ethereal, which could be the root user.

Workaround

For a temporary workaround you can disable all affected protocol
dissectors by selecting Analyze->Enabled Protocols… and
deselecting them from the list. For SMB you can disable SID
snooping in the SMB protocol preference. However, it is strongly
recommended to upgrade to the latest stable version.

Resolution

All Ethereal users should upgrade to the latest stable
version:

    # emerge sync
    # emerge -pv ">=net-analyzer/ethereal-0.10.5"
    # emerge ">=net-analyzer/ethereal-0.10.5"

References

[ 1 ] Ethereal enpa-sa-00015

http://www.ethereal.com/appnotes/enpa-sa-00015.html

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the
Gentoo Security Website:

http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200407-08.xml

Concerns?

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the
confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost
importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to
security@gentoo.org or
alternatively, you may file a bug at http://bugs.gentoo.org.

License

Copyright 2004 Gentoo Foundation, Inc; referenced text belongs
to its owner(s).

The contents of this document are licensed under the Creative
Commons – Attribution / Share Alike license.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0