A number of vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Ethereal network analyzer. These issues have been corrected in Ethereal version 0.99.0 which is provided with this update.

Gerald Combs reported several vulnerabilities in ethereal, a popular network traffic analyser. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

  - CVE-2006-1932     The OID printing routine is susceptible to an off-by-one     error.

  - CVE-2006-1933     The UMA and BER dissectors could go into an infinite     loop.

  - CVE-2006-1934     The Network Instruments file code could overrun a     buffer.

  - CVE-2006-1935     The COPS dissector contains a potential buffer overflow.

  - CVE-2006-1936     The telnet dissector contains a buffer overflow.

  - CVE-2006-1937     Bugs in the SRVLOC and AIM dissector, and in the     statistics counter could crash ethereal.

  - CVE-2006-1938     NULL pointer dereferences in the SMB PIPE dissector and     when reading a malformed Sniffer capture could crash     ethereal.

  - CVE-2006-1939     NULL pointer dereferences in the ASN.1, GSM SMS, RPC and     ASN.1-based dissector and an invalid display filter     could crash ethereal.

  - CVE-2006-1940     The SNDCP dissector could cause an unintended abortion.

Many security vulnerabilities have been fixed since the previous release.

  - The H.248 dissector could crash. Versions affected:
    0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1937

  - The UMA dissector could go into an infinite loop.
    Versions affected: 0.10.12 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1933

  - The X.509if dissector could crash. Versions affected:
    0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1937

  - The SRVLOC dissector could crash. Versions affected:
    0.10.0 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1937

  - The H.245 dissector could crash. Versions affected:
    0.10.13 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1937

  - Ethereal's OID printing routine was susceptible to an     off-by-one error. Versions affected: 0.10.14. CVE:
    CVE-2006-1932

  - The COPS dissector could overflow a buffer. Versions     affected: 0.9.15 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1935

  - The ALCAP dissector could overflow a buffer. Versions     affected: 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1934

Under a grant funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Coverity has uncovered a number of vulnerabilities in Ethereal :

  - The statistics counter could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.10.10 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1937

  - Ethereal could crash while reading a malformed Sniffer     capture. Versions affected: 0.8.12 - 0.10.14. CVE:
    CVE-2006-1938

  - An invalid display filter could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.9.16 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1939

  - The general packet dissector could crash Ethereal.
    Versions affected: 0.10.9 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1937

  - The AIM dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.10.7 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1937

  - The RPC dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.9.8 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1939

  - The DCERPC dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.9.16 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1939

  - The ASN.1 dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.9.8 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1939

  - The SMB PIPE dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.8.20 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1938

  - The BER dissector could loop excessively. Versions     affected: 0.10.4 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1933

  - The SNDCP dissector could abort. Versions affected:
    0.10.4 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1940

  - The Network Instruments file code could overrun a     buffer. Versions affected: 0.10.0 - 0.10.14. CVE:
    CVE-2006-1934

  - The NetXray/Windows Sniffer file code could overrun a     buffer. Versions affected: 0.10.13 - 0.10.14. CVE:
    CVE-2006-1934

  - The GSM SMS dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.9.16 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1939

  - The ALCAP dissector could overrun a buffer. Versions     affected: 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1934

  - The telnet dissector could overrun a buffer. Versions     affected: 0.8.5 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1936

  - ASN.1-based dissectors could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.9.10 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1939

  - The H.248 dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.10.11 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1937

  - The DCERPC NT dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.9.14 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1939

  - The PER dissector could crash Ethereal. Versions     affected: 0.9.14 - 0.10.14. CVE: CVE-2006-1939

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 Ethereal packages that fix various security vulnerabilities are now available.

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

Ethereal is a program for monitoring network traffic.

Several denial of service bugs were found in Ethereal's protocol dissectors. Ethereal could crash or stop responding if it reads a malformed packet off the network. (CVE-2006-1932, CVE-2006-1933, CVE-2006-1937, CVE-2006-1938, CVE-2006-1939, CVE-2006-1940)

Several buffer overflow bugs were found in Ethereal's COPS, telnet, and ALCAP dissectors as well as Network Instruments file code and NetXray/Windows Sniffer file code. Ethereal could crash or execute arbitrary code if it reads a malformed packet off the network.
(CVE-2006-1934, CVE-2006-1935, CVE-2006-1936)

Users of ethereal should upgrade to these updated packages containing version 0.99.0, which is not vulnerable to these issues.

Secunia reports :

Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in Ethereal, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) or compromise a vulnerable system.

The vulnerabilities are caused due to various types of errors including boundary errors, an off-by-one error, an infinite loop error, and several unspecified errors in a multitude of protocol dissectors.

Successful exploitation causes Ethereal to stop responding, consume a large amount of system resources, crash, or execute arbitrary code.

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200604-17 (Ethereal: Multiple vulnerabilities in protocol dissectors)

    Coverity discovered numerous vulnerabilities in versions of     Ethereal prior to 0.99.0, including:
    buffer overflows in the ALCAP (CVE-2006-1934), COPS (CVE-2006-1935)     and telnet (CVE-2006-1936) dissectors.
    buffer overflows     in the NetXray/Windows Sniffer and Network Instruments file code     (CVE-2006-1934).
    For further details please consult the     references below.
  Impact :

    An attacker might be able to exploit these vulnerabilities to crash     Ethereal or execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user     running Ethereal, which could be the root user.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Published	Updated	Severity
21283	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : ethereal (MDKSA-2006:077)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	4/26/2006	1/6/2021	critical
22591	Debian DSA-1049-1 : ethereal - several vulnerabilities	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	10/14/2006	1/4/2021	critical
21274	Fedora Core 5 : ethereal-0.99.0-fc5.1 (2006-456)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	4/26/2006	1/11/2021	critical
21364	RHEL 2.1 / 3 / 4 : ethereal (RHSA-2006:0420)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	5/13/2006	1/14/2021	critical
21397	FreeBSD : ethereal -- Multiple Protocol Dissector Vulnerabilities (21c223f2-d596-11da-8098-00123ffe8333)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	5/13/2006	1/6/2021	critical
21294	Fedora Core 4 : ethereal-0.99.0-fc4.1 (2006-461)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	4/28/2006	1/11/2021	critical
21299	GLSA-200604-17 : Ethereal: Multiple vulnerabilities in protocol dissectors	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	4/28/2006	1/6/2021	critical
21899	CentOS 3 / 4 : ethereal (CESA-2006:0420)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	7/3/2006	1/4/2021	critical

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