A Heap-based Buffer Overflow vulnerability in the flexible PIC concentrator (FPC) of Juniper Networks Junos OS on EX2300, EX3400, EX4100, EX4300, EX4300MP, EX4400, EX4600, EX4650-48Y, and QFX5k Series allows an attacker to send a specific DHCP packet to the device, leading to an FPC crash and restart, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS). Continued receipt and processing of this packet will create a sustained Denial of Service (DoS) condition.
Under a rare timing scenario outside the attackers control, memory corruption may be observed when DHCP Option 82 is enabled, leading to an FPC crash and affecting packet forwarding. Due to the nature of the heap-based overflow, exploitation of this vulnerability could also lead to remote code execution within the FPC, resulting in complete control of the vulnerable component.
This issue affects Junos OS on EX2300, EX3400, EX4100, EX4300, EX4300MP, EX4400, EX4600, EX4650-48Y, and QFX5k Series:
- All versions before 21.4R3-S9,
- from 22.2 before 22.2R3-S5,
- from 22.4 before 22.4R3-S5,
- from 23.2 before 23.2R2-S3,
- from 23.4 before 23.4R2-S3,
- from 24.2 before 24.2R2.
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().
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