The following flaw was reported in less: An out of bounds read access in the UTF-8 decoding can be triggered with a malformed file in the tool less. The access happens in the function is_utf8_well_formed (charset.c, line 534) due to a truncated multibyte character in the sample file. It affects the latest upstream less version 470. The bug does not crash less, it can only be made visible by running less with valgrind or compiling it with Address Sanitizer. The security impact is likely minor as it is only an invalid read access. Additional information: https://blog.fuzzing-project.org/3-less-out-of-bounds-read-access-TFPA-0022014.html http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2015/q1/797
Created less tracking bugs for this issue: Affects: fedora-all [bug 1201310]
Created attachment 1000986 [details] CVE-2014-9488 less patch
Statement: Red Hat Product Security has rated this issue as having Low security impact. This issue is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates. For additional information, refer to the Issue Severity Classification: https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/.
Created attachment 1033170 [details] CVE-2014-9488 less patch The function is_utf8_well_formed was defined in charset.c with single parameter. I was surprised, that it is even compiling. This new patch is updating own implementation of function is_utf8_well_formed and fixing also its other use. The code is taken from Mark Nudelman's unreleased version of less.
External References: https://blog.fuzzing-project.org/3-less-out-of-bounds-read-access-TFPA-0022014.html