CVE-2011-3182

Description

From CVE.org

PHP before 5.3.7 does not properly check the return values of the malloc, calloc, and realloc library functions, which allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and application crash) or trigger a buffer overflow by leveraging the ability to provide an arbitrary value for a function argument, related to (1) ext/curl/interface.c, (2) ext/date/lib/parse_date.c, (3) ext/date/lib/parse_iso_intervals.c, (4) ext/date/lib/parse_tz.c, (5) ext/date/lib/timelib.c, (6) ext/pdo_odbc/pdo_odbc.c, (7) ext/reflection/php_reflection.c, (8) ext/soap/php_sdl.c, (9) ext/xmlrpc/libxmlrpc/base64.c, (10) TSRM/tsrm_win32.c, and (11) the strtotime function.

Statement

Red Hat does not consider this flaw to be a security issue. It is improbable that a script would accept untrusted user input or unvalidated script input data and use it to malloc memory, without filtering/sanitizing it, therefore the value used to malloc memory is under the the full control of the script author and no trust boundary is crossed.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Info alert:Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v2 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score5.15N/A
Attack VectorNetworkNetworkN/A
Access ComplexityHighLowN/A
AuthenticationNoneNoneN/A
Confidentiality ImpactPartialNoneN/A
Integrity ImpactPartialNoneN/A
Availability ImpactPartialPartialN/A

Vector

Red Hat: AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

NVD: AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

NULL pointer dereferences usually result in the failure of the process unless exception handling (on some platforms) is available and implemented. Even when exception handling is being used, it can still be very difficult to return the software to a safe state of operation.

Integrity,Confidentiality

Technical Impact: Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; Read Memory; Modify Memory

In rare circumstances, when NULL is equivalent to the 0x0 memory address and privileged code can access it, then writing or reading memory is possible, which may lead to code execution.

Frequently Asked Questions

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