CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2017-17973

Use After Free

Published: Dec 29, 2017 | Modified: Jul 03, 2024
CVSS 3.x
8.8
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
6.8 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
7.5 MODERATE
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

In LibTIFF 4.0.8, there is a heap-based use-after-free in the t2p_writeproc function in tiff2pdf.c. NOTE: there is a third-party report of inability to reproduce this issue

Weakness

Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Libtiff Libtiff 4.0.8 (including) 4.0.8 (including)
Tiff Ubuntu artful *
Tiff Ubuntu bionic *
Tiff Ubuntu cosmic *
Tiff Ubuntu devel *
Tiff Ubuntu disco *
Tiff Ubuntu esm-infra-legacy/trusty *
Tiff Ubuntu esm-infra/bionic *
Tiff Ubuntu esm-infra/xenial *
Tiff Ubuntu precise/esm *
Tiff Ubuntu trusty *
Tiff Ubuntu trusty/esm *
Tiff Ubuntu xenial *
Tiff Ubuntu zesty *

Extended Description

The use of previously-freed memory can have any number of adverse consequences, ranging from the corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code, depending on the instantiation and timing of the flaw. The simplest way data corruption may occur involves the system’s reuse of the freed memory. Use-after-free errors have two common and sometimes overlapping causes:

In this scenario, the memory in question is allocated to another pointer validly at some point after it has been freed. The original pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to somewhere within the new allocation. As the data is changed, it corrupts the validly used memory; this induces undefined behavior in the process. If the newly allocated data happens to hold a class, in C++ for example, various function pointers may be scattered within the heap data. If one of these function pointers is overwritten with an address to valid shellcode, execution of arbitrary code can be achieved.

Potential Mitigations

References