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CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-4504

Heap-based Buffer Overflow

Published: Sep 21, 2023 | Modified: Nov 04, 2025
CVSS 3.x
7
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
7 MODERATE
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Ubuntu
MEDIUM
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Additional information
NVDhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-4504
CWEhttps://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/122.html

Due to failure in validating the length provided by an attacker-crafted PPD PostScript document, CUPS and libppd are susceptible to a heap-based buffer overflow and possibly code execution. This issue has been fixed in CUPS version 2.4.7, released in September of 2023.

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

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
CupsOpenprinting*2.4.7 (excluding)
LibppdOpenprinting2.0-rc2 (including)2.0-rc2 (including)
CupsUbuntubionic*
CupsUbuntudevel*
CupsUbuntuesm-infra/bionic*
CupsUbuntuesm-infra/focal*
CupsUbuntuesm-infra/xenial*
CupsUbuntufocal*
CupsUbuntujammy*
CupsUbuntulunar*
CupsUbuntumantic*
CupsUbuntunoble*
CupsUbuntuoracular*
CupsUbuntuplucky*
CupsUbuntuquesting*
CupsUbuntutrusty*
CupsUbuntuxenial*
LibppdUbuntubionic*
LibppdUbuntudevel*
LibppdUbuntufocal*
LibppdUbuntulunar*
LibppdUbuntumantic*
LibppdUbuntunoble*
LibppdUbuntuoracular*
LibppdUbuntuplucky*
LibppdUbuntuquesting*
LibppdUbuntutrusty*
LibppdUbuntuxenial*

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

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