GLSA 200807-03: PCRE: Buffer overflow

Severity:high
Title:PCRE: Buffer overflow
Date:07/07/2008
Bugs: #228091, #230039
ID:200807-03

Synopsis

A buffer overflow vulnerability has been discovered in PCRE, allowing for the execution of arbitrary code and a Denial of Service.

Background

PCRE is a Perl-compatible regular expression library. GLib includes a copy of PCRE.

Affected packages

Package Vulnerable Unaffected Architecture(s)
dev-libs/libpcre < 7.7-r1 >= 7.7-r1 All supported architectures
dev-libs/glib < 2.16.3-r1 >= 2.16.3-r1 All supported architectures

Description

Tavis Ormandy of the Google Security team reported a heap-based buffer overflow when compiling regular expression patterns containing "Internal Option Settings" such as "(?i)".

Impact

A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted regular expression to an application making use of the PCRE library, which could possibly lead to the execution of arbitrary code or a Denial of Service.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All PCRE users should upgrade to the latest version:

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-libs/libpcre-7.7-r1"

All GLib users should upgrade to the latest version:

# emerge --sync # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=dev-libs/glib-2.16.3-r1"

References

Availability

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at the Gentoo Security Website: http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200807-03.xml

Concerns?

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to security@gentoo.org or alternatively, you may file a bug at https://bugs.gentoo.org.

License

Copyright 2010 Gentoo Foundation, Inc; referenced text belongs to its owner(s). The contents of this document are licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike license.

Thank you!