CVE-2019-10164

PostgreSQL versions 10.x before 10.9 and versions 11.x before 11.4 are vulnerable to a stack-based buffer overflow. Any authenticated user can overflow a stack-based buffer by changing the users own password to a purpose-crafted value. This often suffices to execute arbitrary code as the PostgreSQL operating system account.

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

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

• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-07/msg00035.html
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2019-10164
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MAGE6H4FWLKFLHLWVYNPYGQRPIXTUWGB/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TTKEHXGDXYYD6WYDIIQJP4GDQJSENDJK/
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202003-03
• https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/1949/
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-07/msg00035.html
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2019-10164
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MAGE6H4FWLKFLHLWVYNPYGQRPIXTUWGB/
• https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/TTKEHXGDXYYD6WYDIIQJP4GDQJSENDJK/
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202003-03
• https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/1949/