CVE-2016-9297

Description

An out-of-bounds heap read was discovered in libtiff. A crafted file could cause the application to crash or, potentially, disclose process memory.

Statement

Red Hat Product Security has rated this issue as having Low security impact. This issue is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates. For additional information, refer to the Issue Severity Classification: https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/.

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 Score3.37.5N/A
Attack VectorLocalNetworkN/A
Attack ComplexityLowLowN/A
Privileges RequiredNoneNoneN/A
User InteractionRequiredNoneN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityNoneNoneN/A
Integrity ImpactNoneNoneN/A
Availability ImpactLowHighN/A

Vector

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

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

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Confidentiality,Integrity,Availability

Technical Impact: Read Memory; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

The case of an omitted null character is the most dangerous of the possible issues. This will almost certainly result in information disclosure, and possibly a buffer overflow condition, which may be exploited to execute arbitrary code.

Confidentiality,Integrity,Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; Read Memory; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)

If a null character is omitted from a string, then most string-copying functions will read data until they locate a null character, even outside of the intended boundaries of the string. This could: cause a crash due to a segmentation fault cause sensitive adjacent memory to be copied and sent to an outsider trigger a buffer overflow when the copy is being written to a fixed-size buffer.

Integrity,Availability

Technical Impact: Modify Memory; DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart

Misplaced null characters may result in any number of security problems. The biggest issue is a subset of buffer overflow, and write-what-where conditions, where data corruption occurs from the writing of a null character over valid data, or even instructions. A randomly placed null character may put the system into an undefined state, and therefore make it prone to crashing. A misplaced null character may corrupt other data in memory.

Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability,Access Control,Other

Technical Impact: Alter Execution Logic; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands

Should the null character corrupt the process flow, or affect a flag controlling access, it may lead to logical errors which allow for the execution of arbitrary code.

Frequently Asked Questions

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