Proxytunnel: Format string vulnerability — GLSA 200411-07

Proxytunnel is vulnerable to a format string vulnerability, potentially allowing a remote server to execute arbitrary code with the rights of the Proxytunnel process.

Affected packages

net-misc/proxytunnel on all architectures
Affected versions < 1.2.3
Unaffected versions >= 1.2.3

Background

Proxytunnel is a program that tunnels connections to a remote server through a standard HTTPS proxy.

Description

Florian Schilhabel of the Gentoo Linux Security Audit project found a format string vulnerability in Proxytunnel. When the program is started in daemon mode (-a [port]), it improperly logs invalid proxy answers to syslog.

Impact

A malicious remote server could send specially-crafted invalid answers to exploit the format string vulnerability, potentially allowing the execution of arbitrary code on the tunnelling host with the rights of the Proxytunnel process.

Workaround

You can mitigate the issue by only allowing connections to trusted remote servers.

Resolution

All Proxytunnel users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-misc/proxytunnel-1.2.3"

References

Release date
November 03, 2004

Latest revision
November 03, 2004: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries