When a BIG-IP PEM classification profile is configured on a UDP virtual server, undisclosed requests can cause the Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) to terminate. This issue affects classification engines using signatures released between 09-08-2022 and 02-16-2023. See the table in the F5 Security Advisory for a complete list of affected classification signature files. NOTE: Software versions which have reached End of Technical Support (EoTS) are not evaluated
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
| Name |
Vendor |
Start Version |
End Version |
| Big-ip_policy_enforcement_manager |
F5 |
15.1.0 (including) |
15.1.10 (including) |
| Big-ip_policy_enforcement_manager |
F5 |
16.1.0 (including) |
16.1.4 (including) |
| Big-ip_policy_enforcement_manager |
F5 |
17.1.0 (including) |
17.1.1 (including) |
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