Heap-based buffer overflow in the legacy Blowfish encryption routine (BlowFishEncryptor::Encode, called by EncryptToString) in Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.5 allows an authenticated mailbox user to cause a denial of service (service crash), and possibly other unspecified impact. In 6.3.4 and 6.3.5, where the self-service REST API is enabled (it is off by default), the user does this remotely by adding a fetch account whose password is 129 to 247 characters long and not a multiple of 8, and then requesting their personal data export (GET /api/v1/me/export.zip), which encrypts that password with the legacy scheme. The same flaw is reachable on Windows by any local interactive user with no hMailServer credentials, through the COM method Utilities.BlowfishEncrypt, which checked no authentication. It is also reachable by every stored-secret write when ProtectStoredSecretsWithDPAPI is set to 0. For such a length, the routines padding loop writes up to 7 zero bytes 2 to 232 bytes past the end of its 255-byte heap buffer. The ciphertext it returns is still correct.
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].