Bug 1706046 (CVE-2005-3590) - CVE-2005-3590 glibc: buffer overflow in getgrouplist function leading to corrupted memory
Summary: CVE-2005-3590 glibc: buffer overflow in getgrouplist function leading to corr...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: CVE-2005-3590
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Red Hat Product Security
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Blocks: 1706047
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2019-05-03 12:40 UTC by Marian Rehak
Modified: 2019-09-29 15:12 UTC (History)
13 users (show)

Fixed In Version: glibc 2.3.5
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Last Closed: 2019-05-03 20:51:35 UTC
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Description Marian Rehak 2019-05-03 12:40:08 UTC
The getgrouplist function in the GNU C library (glibc) before version 2.3.5, when invoked with a zero argument, writes to the passed pointer even if the specified array size is zero, leading to a buffer overflow and potentially allowing attackers to corrupt memory.

Comment 2 Tomas Hoger 2019-05-03 20:51:35 UTC
This is an ancient bug that never affected any of the currently supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions.

Additionally, its impact seems very limited as the problem was triggered by having getgrouplist() called with ngroups argument of 0.  This is unlikely use case.  This argument is likely to be hard-coded in programs, rather than taking a value from an untrusted source.

Comment 3 Tomas Hoger 2019-05-03 21:02:09 UTC
In reply to comment #2:
> Additionally, its impact seems very limited as the problem was triggered by
> having getgrouplist() called with ngroups argument of 0.  This is unlikely
> use case.

To clarify, this would be a valid way to probe how big the size of the groups array should be.  This would, however, trigger out of bounds access during probing, regardless of whether it was malicious or non-malicious use case.  This seems more of a bug than a security issue.


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