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Home >> Browse Vulnerability Assessment Database >> Debian Local Security Checks >> [DSA228] DSA-228-1 libmcrypt

Vulnerability Assessment Details

[DSA228] DSA-228-1 libmcrypt

Vulnerability Assessment Summary
DSA-228-1 libmcrypt

Detailed Explanation for this Vulnerability Assessment

Ilia Alshanetsky discovered several buffer overflows in libmcrypt, a
decryption and encryption library, that originates from improper or
lacking input validation. By passing input which is longer than
expected to a number of functions (multiple functions are affected)
the user can successfully make libmcrypt crash and may be able to insert
arbitrary, malicious code which will be executed under the user
libmcrypt runs as, e.g. inside a web server.
Another vulnerability exists in the way libmcrypt loads algorithms via
libtool. When different algorithms are loaded dynamically, each time
an algorithm is loaded a small part of memory is leaked. In a
persistent environment (web server) this could lead to a memory
exhaustion attack that will exhaust all available memory by launching
repeated requests at an application utilizing the mcrypt library.
For the current stable distribution (woody) these problems have been
fixed in version 2.5.0-1woody1.
The old stable distribution (potato) does not contain libmcrypt packages.
For the unstable distribution (sid) these problems have been fixed in
version 2.5.5-1.
We recommend that you upgrade your libmcrypt packages.

Solution : http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-228
Network Security Threat Level: High

Networks Security ID: 6510, 6512

Vulnerability Assessment Copyright: This script is (C) 2005 Michel Arboi

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