CVE-2018-15671

An issue was discovered in the HDF HDF5 1.10.2 library. Excessive stack consumption has been detected in the function H5P__get_cb() in H5Pint.c during an attempted parse of a crafted HDF file. This results in denial of service.

Weakness

The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either:

• The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question.

• The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute – and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/147.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/227.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/492.html

References

• https://github.com/SegfaultMasters/covering360/tree/master/HDF5#stack-overflow---stackoverflow_h5p__get_cb
• https://github.com/SegfaultMasters/covering360/tree/master/HDF5#stack-overflow---stackoverflow_h5p__get_cb