CVE-2020-14311

There is an issue with grub2 before version 2.06 while handling symlink on ext filesystems. A filesystem containing a symbolic link with an inode size of UINT32_MAX causes an arithmetic overflow leading to a zero-sized memory allocation with subsequent heap-based buffer overflow.

Weakness

A heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc().

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].

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/92.html

References

• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-08/msg00016.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-08/msg00017.html
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2021/09/17/2
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2021/09/17/4
• http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2021/09/21/1
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2020-14311
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202104-05
• https://usn.ubuntu.com/4432-1/