Multiple integer signedness errors in libgadu, as used in ekg before 1.6rc2 and other packages, may allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary code.

Updated kdenetwork packages to correct a security flaw in Kopete are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.

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

The kdenetwork package contains networking applications for the K Desktop Environment. Kopete is a KDE instant messenger which supports a number of protocols including ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, and Gadu-Gadu.

Multiple integer overflow flaws were found in the way Kopete processes Gadu-Gadu messages. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted Gadu-Gadu message which would cause Kopete to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project assigned the name CVE-2005-1852 to this issue.

In order to be affected by this issue, a user would need to have registered with Gadu-Gadu and be signed in to the Gadu-Gadu server in order to receive a malicious message. In addition, Red Hat believes that the Exec-shield technology (enabled by default in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4) would block attempts to remotely exploit this vulnerability.

Note that this issue does not affect Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 or 3.

Users of Kopete should update to these packages which contain a patch to correct this issue.

Wojtek Kaniewski reports :

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in libgadu, a library for handling Gadu-Gadu instant messaging protocol. It is a part of ekg, a Gadu-Gadu client, but is widely used in other clients. Also some of the user contributed scripts were found to behave in an insecure manner.

- integer overflow in libgadu (CVE-2005-1852) that could be triggered by an incomming message and lead to application crash and/or remote code execution

- insecure file creation (CVE-2005-1850) and shell command injection (CVE-2005-1851) in other user contributed scripts (discovered by Marcin Owsiany and Wojtek Kaniewski)

- several signedness errors in libgadu that could be triggered by an incomming network data or an application passing invalid user input to the library

- memory alignment errors in libgadu that could be triggered by an incomming message and lead to bus errors on architectures like SPARC

- endianness errors in libgadu that could cause invalid behaviour of applications on big-endian architectures

Marcin Owsiany and Wojtek Kaniewski discovered that some contributed scripts (contrib/ekgh, contrib/ekgnv.sh, and contrib/getekg.sh) in the ekg package created temporary files in an insecure way, which allowed exploitation of a race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user invoking the script. (CAN-2005-1850)

Marcin Owsiany and Wojtek Kaniewski discovered a shell command injection vulnerability in a contributed utility (contrib/scripts/ekgbot-pre1.py). By sending specially crafted content to the bot, an attacker could exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running ekgbot. (CAN-2005-1851)

Marcin Slusarz discovered an integer overflow in the Gadu library. By sending a specially crafted incoming message, a remote attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the application using libgadu. (CAN-2005-1852)

Eric Romang discovered that another contributed script (contrib/scripts/linki.py) created temporary files in an insecure way, which allowed exploitation of a race condition to create or overwrite files with the privileges of the user invoking the script.
(CAN-2005-1916)

Grzegorz Jaskiewicz discovered several integer overflows in the Gadu library. A remote attacker could exploit this to crash the Gadu client application or even execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user by sending specially crafted messages. (CAN-2005-2369)

Szymon Zygmunt and Michal Bartoszkiewicz discovered a memory alignment error in the Gadu library. By sending specially crafted messages, a remote attacker could crash the application using the library. (CAN-2005-2370)

Marcin Slusarz discovered that the Gadu library did not properly handle endianess conversion in some cases. This caused invalid behavior on big endian architectures. The only affected supported architecture is powerpc. (CAN-2005-2448).

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.

Several problems have been discovered in libgadu which is also part of centericq, a text-mode multi-protocol instant messenger client. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

  - CAN-2005-2369     Multiple integer signedness errors may allow remote     attackers to cause a denial of service or execute     arbitrary code.

  - CAN-2005-2370

    Memory alignment errors may allows remote attackers to     cause a denial of service on certain architectures such     as sparc.

  - CAN-2005-2448

    Several endianess errors may allow remote attackers to     cause a denial of service.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2005:639 advisory.

    The kdenetwork package contains networking applications for the K Desktop     Environment.  Kopete is a KDE instant messenger which supports a number of     protocols including ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, and Gadu-Gadu.

    Multiple integer overflow flaws were found in the way Kopete processes     Gadu-Gadu messages. A remote attacker could send a specially crafted     Gadu-Gadu message which would cause Kopete to crash or possibly execute     arbitrary code. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project     assigned the name CAN-2005-1852 to this issue.

    In order to be affected by this issue, a user would need to have registered     with Gadu-Gadu and be signed in to the Gadu-Gadu server in order to receive     a malicious message.  In addition, Red Hat believes that the Exec-shield     technology (enabled by default in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4) would block     attempts to remotely exploit this vulnerability.

    Note that this issue does not affect Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 or 3.

    Users of Kopete should update to these packages which contain a     patch to correct this issue.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
21954	CentOS 4 : kdenetwork (CESA-2005:639)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	high
21414	FreeBSD : libgadu -- multiple vulnerabilities (3b4a6982-0b24-11da-bc08-0001020eed82)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	critical
20568	Ubuntu 5.04 : ekg vulnerabilities (USN-162-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	critical
19709	Debian DSA-813-1 : centericq - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high
19286	RHEL 4 : kdenetwork (RHSA-2005:639)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2005-2369

critical

Tenable Plugins

high

critical

critical

high

high