Wazuh is a free and open source platform used for threat prevention, detection, and response. Starting in version 3.9.0 and prior to version 4.14.3, multiple stack-based buffer overflows exist in the Security Configuration Assessment (SCA) decoder (wazuh-analysisd). The use of sprintf with a floating-point (%lf) format specifier on a fixed-size 128-byte buffer allows a remote attacker to overflow the stack. A specially crafted JSON event can trigger this overflow, leading to a denial of service (crash) or potential RCE on the Wazuh manager. The vulnerability is located in /src/analysisd/decoders/security_configuration_assessment.c, within the FillScanInfo and FillCheckEventInfo functions. In multiple locations, a 128-byte buffer (char value[OS_SIZE_128];) is allocated on the stack to hold the string representation of a number from a JSON event. The code checks if the number is an integer or a double. If its a double, it uses sprintf(value, %lf, ...) to perform the conversion. This sprintf call is unbounded. If a floating-point number with a large exponent (e.g., 1.0e150) is provided, sprintf will attempt to write its full string representation (a 1 followed by 150 zeros), which is larger than the 128-byte buffer, corrupting the stack. Version 4.14.3 patches the issue.
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).
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].