Vulnerabilities
Misconfiguration
Runtime Security
Compliance
CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-4692

Heap-based Buffer Overflow

Published: Oct 25, 2023 | Modified: Nov 21, 2024
CVSS 3.x
7.8
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
7.5 LOW
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Ubuntu
MEDIUM
Additional information
NVDhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-4692
CWEhttps://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/122.html

An out-of-bounds write flaw was found in grub2s NTFS filesystem driver. This issue may allow an attacker to present a specially crafted NTFS filesystem image, leading to grubs heap metadata corruption. In some circumstances, the attack may also corrupt the UEFI firmware heap metadata. As a result, arbitrary code execution and secure boot protection bypass may be achieved.

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

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Grub2 Gnu * 2.12 (excluding)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 RedHat grub2-1:2.02-156.el8 *
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 RedHat grub2-1:2.06-77.el9 *
Grub2 Ubuntu bionic *
Grub2 Ubuntu trusty *
Grub2 Ubuntu upstream *
Grub2 Ubuntu xenial *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu bionic *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu devel *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu esm-infra-legacy/trusty *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu focal *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu jammy *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu lunar *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu mantic *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu noble *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu oracular *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu trusty *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu trusty/esm *
Grub2-signed Ubuntu xenial *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu bionic *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu devel *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu focal *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu jammy *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu lunar *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu mantic *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu noble *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu oracular *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu trusty *
Grub2-unsigned Ubuntu xenial *

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

Aqua Security is the largest pure-play cloud native security company, providing customers the freedom to innovate and run their businesses with minimal friction. The Aqua Cloud Native Security Platform provides prevention, detection, and response automation across the entire application lifecycle to secure the build, secure cloud infrastructure and secure running workloads wherever they are deployed.
Copyright © 2025 Aqua Security Software Ltd.   Privacy Policy | Terms of Use