A flaw was found in libsolv. This heap buffer overflow vulnerability occurs when a victim processes a specially crafted .solv file containing negative size values in the repo_add_solv function. This leads to an undersized memory allocation and a subsequent out-of-bounds write. An attacker could exploit this to cause a denial of service (DoS).
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().
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Libsolv | Opensuse | * | 0.7.36 (including) |
| Hardened_images | Redhat | - (including) | - (including) |
| Openshift_container_platform | Redhat | 4.0 (including) | 4.0 (including) |
| Satellite | Redhat | 6.0 (including) | 6.0 (including) |
| Update_infrastructure | Redhat | 4 (including) | 4 (including) |
| Enterprise_linux | Redhat | 7.0 (including) | 7.0 (including) |
| Enterprise_linux | Redhat | 8.0 (including) | 8.0 (including) |
| Enterprise_linux | Redhat | 9.0 (including) | 9.0 (including) |
| Enterprise_linux | Redhat | 10.0 (including) | 10.0 (including) |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | RedHat | libsolv-0:0.7.33-5.el10_2 | * |
| Red Hat Hardened Images | RedHat | libsolv-main-0.7.38-2.hum1 | * |
| Libsolv | Ubuntu | upstream | * |
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].