Amazon Linux 2 : vim (ALAS-2024-2711)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 213342

Synopsis

The remote Amazon Linux 2 host is missing a security update.

Description

It is, therefore, affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the ALAS2-2024-2711 advisory.

Vim is an improved version of the unix vi text editor. When flushing the typeahead buffer, Vim moves the current position in the typeahead buffer but does not check whether there is enough space left in the buffer to handle the next characters. So this may lead to the tb_off position within the typebuf variable to point outside of the valid buffer size, which can then later lead to a heap-buffer overflow in e.g.
ins_typebuf(). Therefore, when flushing the typeahead buffer, check if there is enough space left before advancing the off position. If not, fall back to flush current typebuf contents. It's not quite clear yet, what can lead to this situation. It seems to happen when error messages occur (which will cause Vim to flush the typeahead buffer) in comnination with several long mappgins and so it may eventually move the off position out of a valid buffer size. Impact is low since it is not easily reproducible and requires to have several mappings active and run into some error condition. But when this happens, this will cause a crash. The issue has been fixed as of Vim patch v9.1.0697. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue. (CVE-2024-43802)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the tested product security advisory.

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

Solution

Run 'yum update vim' to update your system.

See Also

https://alas.aws.amazon.com/faqs.html

https://alas.aws.amazon.com/cve/html/CVE-2024-43802.html

https://alas.aws.amazon.com/AL2/ALAS-2024-2711.html

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 213342

File Name: al2_ALAS-2024-2711.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 12/23/2024

Updated: 12/23/2024

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 3.7

Temporal Score: 2.7

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2024-43802

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.5

Temporal Score: 3.9

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:amazon:linux:2, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:vim-x11, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:vim-common, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:vim-debuginfo, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:vim-enhanced, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:vim-filesystem, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:vim-minimal, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:vim-data, p-cpe:/a:amazon:linux:xxd

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/AmazonLinux/release, Host/AmazonLinux/rpm-list

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 12/5/2024

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/26/2024

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2024-43802