CVE-2018-17985

Description

From CVE.org

An issue was discovered in cp-demangle.c in GNU libiberty, as distributed in GNU Binutils 2.31. There is a stack consumption problem caused by the cplus_demangle_type function making recursive calls to itself in certain scenarios involving many 'P' characters.

Statement

This issue is classified with a low severity primarily because binutils is not typically exposed to untrusted inputs in most environments, limiting the possibility of exploitation. Additionally, this stack memory exhaustion is only triggered during the parsing of a specially crafted file, requiring an attacker to convince a user to process this file with c++filt. Furthermore, binutils does not handle privileged operations, meaning that exploitation is unlikely to lead to system compromise or escalation of privileges. Also, the impact is limited to the application itself, without affecting the broader system or network security.

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 v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score5.55.5N/A
Attack VectorLocalLocalN/A
Attack ComplexityLowLowN/A
Privileges RequiredNoneNoneN/A
User InteractionRequiredRequiredN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityNoneNoneN/A
Integrity ImpactNoneNoneN/A
Availability ImpactHighHighN/A

Vector

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

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

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

When allocating resources without limits, an attacker could prevent other systems, applications, or processes from accessing the same type of resource. It can be easy for an attacker to consume many resources by rapidly making many requests or causing larger resources to be used than is needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Want to get errata notifications? Sign up here.