Bug 478888 (CVE-2008-2383)

Summary: CVE-2008-2383 xterm: arbitrary command injection
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: Mark J. Cox <mjc>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Red Hat Product Security <security-response-team>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: unspecifiedCC: bressers, kreilly, mlichvar, pertusus
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
URL: http://nvd.nist.gov/nvd.cfm?cvename=CVE-2008-2383
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2009-01-08 12:44:23 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On: 478895, 478896, 478897, 478898, 478899, 478954    
Bug Blocks:    
Attachments:
Description Flags
Patch extracted from upstream none

Description Mark J. Cox 2009-01-05 21:08:18 UTC
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures assigned an identifier CVE-2008-2383 to the following vulnerability:

CRLF injection vulnerability in xterm allows user-assisted attackers to execute arbitrary commands via LF (aka \n) characters surrounding a command name within a Device Control Request Status String (DECRQSS) escape sequence in a text file, a related issue to CVE-2003-0063 and CVE-2003-0071.

This issue affects xterm as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5.

Comment 4 Josh Bressers 2009-01-06 02:14:48 UTC
Created attachment 328245 [details]
Patch extracted from upstream

Comment 7 Mark J. Cox 2009-01-06 10:23:08 UTC
The version of xterm as shipped in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 is not affected by this issue.

The reason is that in the older xterm version control characters such as \n characters were not allowed in a device control string.  When building up the string to pass to do_dcs, xterm uses the sos_table (VTPrsTbl.c) to parse each character.  Each valid character is set to CASE_IGNORE.  So a trace of a vulnerable (rhel-3) xterm shows:

parse 001B -> 5 ansi_table
parse 0050 -> 87 esc_table
CASE_DCS: Device Control String
parse 0024 -> 1 sos_table
CASE_IGNORE - Ignore character 24
parse 0071 -> 1 sos_table
CASE_IGNORE - Ignore character 71
parse 000D -> 1 sos_table
CASE_IGNORE - Ignore character 0D
parse 000A -> 1 sos_table
...
parse 001B -> 5 sos_table
parse 005C -> 90 esc_table
CASE_ST: End of String (18 bytes)
do_dcs($q
bad-command
:17)

But in the xterm in RHEL-2.1 control characters are not ignored:

parse 001B -> 7 ansi_table
parse 0050 -> 89 esc_table
parse 0024 -> 3 sos_table
parse 0071 -> 3 sos_table
parse 000D -> 6 sos_table
parse 000A -> 8 ansi_table
...

That renders this flaw as unexploitable on RHEL-2.1 xterm.

Comment 9 Mark J. Cox 2009-01-06 15:03:15 UTC
Updated xterm packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, 5 have been built and are currently completing testing.  As soon as they have passed they will be pushed to Red Hat Network.