A heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the input parsing logic of Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP). This flaw can be triggered without authentication by sending specially crafted input to the target system. Improper bounds checking allows an attacker to overwrite heap memory, potentially leading to application crashes or remote code execution. Exploitation occurs in the context of the affected process and does not require user interaction. The vulnerability poses a high risk due to its pre-authentication nature and potential for full compromise. This vulnerability affects all UDP versions prior to 10.2. UDP 10.2 includes the necessary patches and requires no action. Versions 8.0 through 10.1 are supported and require either patch application or upgrade to 10.2. Versions 7.x and earlier are unsupported or out of maintenance and must be upgraded to 10.2 to remediate the issue.
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