A security flaw was found in the way strcoll() interface of glibc, the GNU libc libraries, performed failsafe back to alloca() routine when malloc() function call failed previously (due to out of memory [OOM] condition for example). If an application linked against glibc was missing an application-level sanity checks for validity of strcoll() arguments and accepted untrusted input, an attacker could use this flaw to cause the particular application to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the application.

Upstream bug report (including the reproducer):
[1] http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14552#c0

Issue / part: 1) alloca() stack overflow from [1].

References:
[2] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/07/9
[3] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/07/15
[4] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/10/1
[5] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/10/3
[6] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/13/16