Bug 1435182 – CVE-2016-10255 elfutils: Memory allocation failure in __libelf_set_rawdata_wrlock (elf_getdata.c)

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Bug 1435182 - (CVE-2016-10255) CVE-2016-10255 elfutils: Memory allocation failure in __libelf_set_rawdata_wrlock (elf_getdata.c)

Summary:	CVE-2016-10255 elfutils: Memory allocation failure in __libelf_set_rawdata_wr...

Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX

Aliases:	CVE-2016-10255

Product:	Security Response
Classification:	Other
Component:	vulnerability (Show other bugs)
Sub Component:
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All Linux

Priority	low Severity low
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Assigned To:	Red Hat Product Security
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Whiteboard:	impact=low,public=20161109,reported=2...
Keywords:	Security

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Reported:	2017-03-23 06:47 EDT by Andrej Nemec
Modified:	2017-08-07 04:23 EDT (History)
CC List:	13 users (show)

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Fixed In Version:	elfutils 0.168
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Last Closed:	2017-03-23 06:50:14 EDT
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Description Andrej Nemec 2017-03-23 06:47:44 EDT

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-__libelf_set_rawdata_wrlock-elf_getdata-c/
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q4/367

Comment 1 Mark Wielaard 2017-03-23 07:04:35 EDT

(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 it real bug wasn't a crash but a possibly very large allocation failure. Normally the application would get E_ELF_NOMEM as error value (except when malloc was overridden as in the fuzzing example). The fix was to make the code first check whether the allocation size made sense and if not return ELF_E_INVALID_SECTION_HEADER early instead of trying to allocate the memory.

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