A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability was found in NBD server implementation in qemu before 2.11 allowing a client to request an export name of size up to 4096 bytes, which in fact should be limited to 256 bytes, causing an out-of-bounds stack write in the qemu process. If NBD server requires TLS, the attacker cannot trigger the buffer overflow without first successfully negotiating TLS.
Weakness
A stack-based buffer overflow condition is a condition where the buffer being overwritten is allocated on the stack (i.e., is a local variable or, rarely, a parameter to a function).
Affected Software
| Name |
Vendor |
Start Version |
End Version |
| Qemu |
Qemu |
* |
2.11 (excluding) |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10.0 (Newton) |
RedHat |
qemu-kvm-rhev-10:2.10.0-21.el7 |
* |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 11.0 (Ocata) |
RedHat |
qemu-kvm-rhev-10:2.10.0-21.el7 |
* |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 12.0 (Pike) |
RedHat |
qemu-kvm-rhev-10:2.10.0-21.el7 |
* |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8.0 (Liberty) |
RedHat |
qemu-kvm-rhev-10:2.10.0-21.el7 |
* |
| Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9.0 (Mitaka) |
RedHat |
qemu-kvm-rhev-10:2.10.0-21.el7 |
* |
| Red Hat Virtualization 4 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 |
RedHat |
qemu-kvm-rhev-10:2.10.0-21.el7 |
* |
| Qemu |
Ubuntu |
artful |
* |
| Qemu |
Ubuntu |
upstream |
* |
| Qemu |
Ubuntu |
zesty |
* |
Potential Mitigations
- Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index checking.
- D3-SFCV (Stack Frame Canary Validation) from D3FEND [REF-1334] discusses canary-based detection in detail.
- Run or compile the software using features or extensions that randomly arrange the positions of a program’s executable and libraries in memory. Because this makes the addresses unpredictable, it can prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to exploitable code.
- Examples include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) [REF-58] [REF-60] and Position-Independent Executables (PIE) [REF-64]. Imported modules may be similarly realigned if their default memory addresses conflict with other modules, in a process known as “rebasing” (for Windows) and “prelinking” (for Linux) [REF-1332] using randomly generated addresses. ASLR for libraries cannot be used in conjunction with prelink since it would require relocating the libraries at run-time, defeating the whole purpose of prelinking.
- For more information on these techniques see D3-SAOR (Segment Address Offset Randomization) from D3FEND [REF-1335].
References