Gaim before 1.3.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a malformed MSN message that leads to a memory allocation of a large size, possibly due to an integer signedness error.

This advisory adds security support for the stable amd64 distribution.
It covers all security updates since the release of sarge, which were missing updated packages for the not yet official amd64 port. Future security advisories will include updates for this port as well.

An updated gaim package that fixes two denial of service issues is now available.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

The Gaim application is a multi-protocol instant messaging client.

Jacopo Ottaviani discovered a bug in the way Gaim handles Yahoo! Messenger file transfers. It is possible for a malicious user to send a specially crafted file transfer request that causes Gaim to crash.
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2005-1269 to this issue.

Additionally, Hugo de Bokkenrijder discovered a bug in the way Gaim parses MSN Messenger messages. It is possible for a malicious user to send a specially crafted MSN Messenger message that causes Gaim to crash. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2005-1934 to this issue.

Users of gaim are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which contains version 1.3.1 and is not vulnerable to these issues.

A remote Denial of Service vulnerability was discovered in Gaim. A remote attacker could crash the Gaim client of an MSN user by sending a specially crafted MSN package which states an invalid body length in the header.

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

The GAIM team reports :

Remote attackers can cause a denial of service (crash) via a malformed MSN message that leads to a memory allocation of a large size, possibly due to an integer signedness error.

Two denial of service problems have been discovered in Gaim, a multi-protocol instant messaging client. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

  - CAN-2005-1269     A malformed Yahoo filename can result in a crash of the     application.

  - CAN-2005-1934

    A malformed MSN message can lead to incorrect memory     allocation resulting in a crash of the application.

The old stable distribution (woody) does not seem to be affected.

More vulnerabilities have been discovered in the gaim IM client. The first is a remote crash with the Yahoo! protocol (CVE-2005-1269) and the second is a remote DoS in the MSN protocol (CVE-2005-1934).

These problems have been corrected in gaim 1.3.1 which is provided with this update.

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200506-11 (Gaim: Denial of Service vulnerabilities)

    Jacopo Ottaviani discovered a vulnerability in the Yahoo! file     transfer code when being offered files with names containing non-ASCII     characters (CAN-2005-1269).
    Hugo de Bokkenrijder discovered a     vulnerability when receiving malformed MSN messages (CAN-2005-1934).
  Impact :

    Both vulnerabilities cause Gaim to crash, resulting in a Denial of     Service.
  Workaround :

    There are no known workarounds at this time.

The remote host appears to be running Gaim, a popular open-source, multi-protocol instant messenger. It is reported that this version of Gaim is vulnerable to several remote flaws.  Namely

1) A Gaim client downloading a non-Ascii support file will crash when processing the file
2) The Gaim MSN Messenger module, when processing a malformed message, will crash.

Both of these vulnerabilities are Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that introduce a risk to availability.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
57528	Debian DSA-773-1 : amd64 - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
21836	CentOS 3 / 4 : gaim (CESA-2005:518)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	medium
20533	Ubuntu 4.10 / 5.04 : gaim vulnerability (USN-140-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	medium
19093	FreeBSD : gaim -- MSN Remote DoS vulnerability (b6612eee-df5f-11d9-b875-0001020eed82)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	medium
18623	Debian DSA-734-1 : gaim - denial of service	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	medium
18511	RHEL 3 / 4 : gaim (RHSA-2005:518)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	medium
18496	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : gaim (MDKSA-2005:099)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	medium
18468	GLSA-200506-11 : Gaim: Denial of Service vulnerabilities	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	medium
3012	Gaim < 1.3.1 Multiple Vulnerabilities	Nessus Network Monitor	Internet Messengers	low

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2005-1934

high

Tenable Plugins

critical

medium

medium

medium

medium

medium

medium

medium

low