Dropbear: Privilege escalation

1. Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

Advisory Reference	GLSA 200512-13 / dropbear
Release Date	December 23, 2005
Latest Revision	December 23, 2005: 01
Impact	high
Exploitable	remote

Package	Vulnerable versions	Unaffected versions	Architecture(s)
net-misc/dropbear	< 0.47	>= 0.47	All supported architectures

Related bugreports: #116006

Synopsis

A buffer overflow in Dropbear could allow authenticated users to execute arbitrary code as the root user.

2. Impact Information

Background

Dropbear is an SSH server and client with a small memory footprint.

Description

Under certain conditions Dropbear could fail to allocate a sufficient amount of memory, possibly resulting in a buffer overflow.

Impact

By sending specially crafted data to the server, authenticated users could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the SSH server user, which is the root user by default.

3. Resolution Information

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Dropbear users should upgrade to the latest version:

Code Listing 3.1: Resolution

# emerge --sync
# emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-misc/dropbear-0.47"

4. References

CVE-2005-4178

Updated December 23, 2005

Summary: This is a Gentoo Linux Security Advisory

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