An array index error, leading to stack-based buffer overflow flaw was found in the way nss-pam-ldapd, a PAM and nsswitch module which uses directory servers, performed management of file descriptors when performing file descriptors activity wait. An attacker could use this flaw to cause processes with a large number of opened file descriptors, that performed name lookups to crash or, potentially, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the process. Upstream advisory: [1] http://arthurdejong.org/nss-pam-ldapd/CVE-2013-0288
This issue affects the version of the nss-pam-ldapd package, as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. -- This issue affects the version of the nss-pam-ldapd package, as shipped with Fedora release of 17. -- This issue did NOT affect the version of the nss-pam-ldapd package, as shipped with Fedora release of 18 (the functionality in question has been reimplemented to use poll() system call instead, and therefore as such is NOT vulnerable to this problem).
Acknowledgements: Red Hat would like to thank Garth Mollett for reporting this issue.
The CVE identifier of CVE-2013-0288 has been assigned to this issue.
Created nss-pam-ldapd tracking bugs for this issue Affects: fedora-17 [bug 912454]
Open-Source Security mailing list post: http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2013/02/18/2
Upstream backport to Debian: http://arthurdejong.org/viewvc/nss-pam-ldapd?revision=1926&view=revision
nss-pam-ldapd-0.7.16-3.fc17 has been pushed to the Fedora 17 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Via RHSA-2013:0590 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2013-0590.html