CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2019-18178

Use After Free

Published: Nov 04, 2019 | Modified: Nov 09, 2019
CVSS 3.x
7.5
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
CVSS 2.x
5 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Real Time Engineers FreeRTOS+FAT 160919a has a use after free. The function FF_Close() is defined in ff_file.c. The file handler pxFile is freed by ffconfigFREE, which (by default) is a macro definition of vPortFree(), but it is reused to flush modified file content from the cache to disk by the function FF_FlushCache().

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
Freertos+fat Amazon 160919a 160919a

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