CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2015-0255

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Feb 13, 2015 | Modified: Oct 30, 2018
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
6.4 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V2
3.6 MODERATE
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

X.Org Server (aka xserver and xorg-server) before 1.16.3 and 1.17.x before 1.17.1 allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive information from process memory or cause a denial of service (crash) via a crafted string length value in a XkbSetGeometry request.

Weakness

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Xorg-server X.org * 1.16.3 (including)
Xorg-server X.org 1.17.0 (including) 1.17.0 (including)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 RedHat xorg-x11-server-0:1.15.0-26.el6_6 *
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 RedHat xorg-x11-server-0:1.15.0-33.ael7b_1 *
Vnc4 Ubuntu artful *
Vnc4 Ubuntu bionic *
Vnc4 Ubuntu cosmic *
Vnc4 Ubuntu esm-apps/bionic *
Vnc4 Ubuntu esm-apps/xenial *
Vnc4 Ubuntu lucid *
Vnc4 Ubuntu precise *
Vnc4 Ubuntu trusty *
Vnc4 Ubuntu trusty/esm *
Vnc4 Ubuntu upstream *
Vnc4 Ubuntu utopic *
Vnc4 Ubuntu vivid *
Vnc4 Ubuntu wily *
Vnc4 Ubuntu xenial *
Vnc4 Ubuntu yakkety *
Vnc4 Ubuntu zesty *
Xorg-server Ubuntu artful *
Xorg-server Ubuntu bionic *
Xorg-server Ubuntu cosmic *
Xorg-server Ubuntu devel *
Xorg-server Ubuntu disco *
Xorg-server Ubuntu eoan *
Xorg-server Ubuntu focal *
Xorg-server Ubuntu groovy *
Xorg-server Ubuntu hirsute *
Xorg-server Ubuntu impish *
Xorg-server Ubuntu jammy *
Xorg-server Ubuntu kinetic *
Xorg-server Ubuntu lucid *
Xorg-server Ubuntu lunar *
Xorg-server Ubuntu mantic *
Xorg-server Ubuntu noble *
Xorg-server Ubuntu oracular *
Xorg-server Ubuntu precise *
Xorg-server Ubuntu trusty *
Xorg-server Ubuntu upstream *
Xorg-server Ubuntu utopic *
Xorg-server Ubuntu vivid *
Xorg-server Ubuntu vivid/stable-phone-overlay *
Xorg-server Ubuntu wily *
Xorg-server Ubuntu xenial *
Xorg-server Ubuntu yakkety *
Xorg-server Ubuntu zesty *
Xorg-server-lts-quantal Ubuntu precise *
Xorg-server-lts-raring Ubuntu precise *
Xorg-server-lts-saucy Ubuntu precise *
Xorg-server-lts-trusty Ubuntu precise *
Xorg-server-lts-utopic Ubuntu trusty *

Extended Description

There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:

Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:

Information exposures can occur in different ways:

It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References