Bug 1435183 (CVE-2016-10254)

Summary: CVE-2016-10254 elfutils: Memory allocation failure in allocate_elf
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: Andrej Nemec <anemec>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Red Hat Product Security <security-response-team>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedCC: anemec, aoliva, drepper, fche, jakub, kanderso, mcermak, me, mjw, mjw, mnewsome, ohudlick, roland
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: elfutils 0.168 Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2017-03-23 10:50:35 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description Andrej Nemec 2017-03-23 10:49:37 UTC 
A vulnerability was found in elfutils. A maliciously crafted ELF file could cause a very large allocation failure.

References:

https://blogs.gentoo.org/ago/2016/11/04/elfutils-memory-allocation-failure-in-allocate_elf-common-h/
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q4/368
Comment 1 Mark Wielaard 2017-03-23 11:09:33 UTC 
(In reply to Andrej Nemec from comment #0)
> A vulnerability was found in elfutils. A maliciously crafted ELF file could
> cause the application to crash.

Note that the real bug wasn't a crash (unless the application made malloc abort when an allocation failed) but a possibly very large allocation failure. The fix was to limit the maximum amount of memory the library would allocated to the file size that was being read.