Multiple vulnerabilities in PWLib before 1.6.0 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code, as demonstrated by the NISCC/OUSPG PROTOS test suite for the H.225 protocol.

The NISCC and the OUSPG developed a test suite for the H.323 protocol.
This test suite has uncovered vulnerabilities in several H.323 implementations with impacts ranging from denial-of-service to arbitrary code execution.

In the FreeBSD Ports Collection, `pwlib' is directly affected. Other applications such as `asterisk' and `openh323' incorporate `pwlib' statically and so are also independently affected.

Multiple vulnerabilities were discovered in pwlib, a library used to aid in writing portable applications, whereby a remote attacker could cause a denial of service or potentially execute arbitrary code. This library is most notably used in several applications implementing the H.323 teleconferencing protocol, including the OpenH323 suite, gnomemeeting and asterisk.

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200404-11 (Multiple Vulnerabilities in pwlib)

    Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in the implementation of protocol     H.323 contained in pwlib. Most of the vulnerabilies are in the parsing of     ASN.1 elements which would allow an attacker to use a maliciously crafted     ASN.1 element to cause unpredictable behavior in pwlib.
  Impact :

    An attacker may cause a denial of service condition or cause a buffer     overflow that would allow arbitrary code to be executed with root     privileges.
  Workaround :

    Blocking ports 1719 and 1720 may reduce the likelihood of an attack. All     users are advised to upgrade to the latest version of the affected package.

The NISCC uncovered bugs in pwlib prior to version 1.6.0 via a test suite for the H.225 protocol. An attacker could trigger these bugs by sending carefully crafted messages to an application that uses pwlib, and the severity would vary based on the application, but likely would result in a Denial of Service (DoS).

The updated packages provide backported fixes from Craig Southeren of the OpenH323 project to protect against this issue.

A test suite for the H.225 protocol (part of the H.323 family) provided by the NISCC uncovered bugs in PWLib prior to version 1.6.0.
An attacker could trigger these bugs by sending carefully crafted messages to an application. The effects of such an attack can vary depending on the application, but would usually result in a Denial of Service. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2004-0097 to this issue.

Users are advised to upgrade to the update packages, which contain backported security fixes and are not vulnerable to these issues.

Red Hat would like to thank Craig Southeren of the OpenH323 project for providing the fixes for these issues.

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Updated PWLib packages that contain fixes for security issues found during protocol testing by the NISCC are now available.

PWLib is a cross-platform class library designed to support the OpenH323 project. OpenH323 provides an implementation of the ITU H.323 teleconferencing protocol, used by packages such as Gnome Meeting.

A test suite for the H.225 protocol (part of the H.323 family) provided by the NISCC uncovered bugs in PWLib prior to version 1.6.0.
An attacker could trigger these bugs by sending carefully crafted messages to an application. The effects of such an attack can vary depending on the application, but would usually result in a Denial of Service. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2004-0097 to this issue.

Users are advised to upgrade to the erratum packages, which contain backported security fixes and are not vulnerable to these issues.

Red Hat would like to thank Craig Southeren of the OpenH323 project for providing the fixes for these issues.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
37542	FreeBSD : Vulnerabilities in H.323 implementations (27c331d5-64c7-11d8-80e3-0020ed76ef5a)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	critical
15285	Debian DSA-448-1 : pwlib - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
14476	GLSA-200404-11 : Multiple Vulnerabilities in pwlib	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	critical
14117	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : pwlib (MDKSA-2004:017)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	critical
13678	Fedora Core 1 : pwlib-1.5.0-4 (2004-078)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	critical
12460	RHEL 3 : pwlib (RHSA-2004:047)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	critical

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CVE-2004-0097

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