Stack-based buffer overflow in the separate_word function in tokenize.c in Link Grammar 4.1b and possibly other versions, as used in AbiWord Link Grammar 4.2.4, allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a long word, as reachable through the separate_sentence function.

Alin Rad Pop discovered that link-grammar, Carnegie Mellon University's link grammar parser for English, performed insufficient validation within its tokenizer, which could allow a malicious input file to execute arbitrary code.

Alin Rad Pop discovered that AbiWord's Link Grammar parser did not correctly handle overly-long words. If a user were tricked into opening a specially crafted document, AbiWord, or other applications using Link Grammar, could be made to crash.

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 remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200711-27 (Link Grammar: User-assisted execution of arbitrary code)

    Alin Rad Pop from Secunia Research discovered a boundary error in the     function separate_sentence() in file tokenize.c when processing an     overly long word which might lead to a stack-based buffer overflow.
  Impact :

    A remote attacker could entice a user to parse a specially crafted     sentence, resulting in the remote execution of arbitrary code with the     privileges of the user running the application. Note that this     vulnerability may be triggered by an application using Link Grammar to     parse sentences (e.g. AbiWord).
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

CVE-2007-5395 is fixed in this release

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.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
29705	Debian DSA-1432-1 : link-grammar - buffer overflow	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
28357	Ubuntu 7.10 : link-grammar vulnerability (USN-545-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	critical
28266	GLSA-200711-27 : Link Grammar: User-assisted execution of arbitrary code	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	critical
28214	Fedora 7 : link-grammar-4.2.5-1.fc7 (2007-3339)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	critical
28189	Fedora 8 : link-grammar-4.2.5-1.fc8 (2007-3235)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	critical

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2007-5395

critical

Tenable Plugins

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