A stack-based buffer overflow flaw was found in the way MXit protocol plug-in of libPurple processed certain HTTP headers data. A rogue server or remote attacker could send a specially-crafted HTTP request that, when processed by the Pidgin client, would lead to pidgin executable crash or, potentially, arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the user running the pidgin binary. Upstream ticket: [1] http://pidgin.im/news/security/?id=66
Created attachment 696215 [details] Local copy of (by Pidgin upstream) proposed patch to fix the CVE-2013-0272 issue
This issue affects the versions of the pidgin package, as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6. -- This issue affects the versions of the pidgin package, as shipped with Fedora release of 16, 17, and 18.
Created pidgin tracking bugs for this issue Affects: fedora-all [bug 910826]
External References: http://www.pidgin.im/news/security/?id=66
Upstream patch: http://hg.pidgin.im/pidgin/main/rev/879db2a9a59c
Analysis: There are two parts to the patch, the first part just null terminates buf and the second one actually prevents the buffer overflow. buf is on the stack and is defined as "char buf[256]" also looking at the disassemble i find the following: 0x0000a1c0 <+1168>: call 0x17ed0 <__stack_chk_fail_local> There are no other strings in the function, so based on above i am going to assume that the function is protected by SSP
Acknowledgements: Red Hat would like to thank the Pidgin project for reporting this issue. Upstream acknowledges Daniel Atallah as the original reporter.
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Via RHSA-2013:0646 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013-0646.html