Ethereal: enpa-sa-00007

Summary

Name: Multiple issues with Ethereal 0.9.7

Docid: enpa-sa-00007

Date: December 7, 2002

Versions affected: 0.9.7 and earlier

Severity: High

Details

Description:

The BGP dissector in Ethereal 0.9.7 and earlier versions can go into an infinite loop when trying to process a malformed message. This problem was discovered by Silvio Cesare.

Malformed packets could cause crashes in the LMP, PPP, and TDS dissectors in 0.9.7 and earlier versions.

In order to determine which version of Ethereal you have installed, do one of the following:

Load Ethereal and go to the Help->About Ethereal... menu item.
From the command line run
```
ethereal -v
```
or
```
tethereal -v
```
(the "v" is lowercase").

Either action will display the the application version along with the libraries that Ethereal and Tethereal are linked with. If version "0.9.7" or prior is displayed, the application is susceptible.

Impact:

It may be possible to make Ethereal crash or hang by injecting a purposefully malformed packet onto the wire, or by convincing someone to read a malformed packet trace file. It may be possible to make Ethereal run arbitrary code by exploiting the buffer and pointer problems.

Resolution:

Upgrade to 0.9.8.

If you are running a version prior to 0.9.8, you can disable the BGP, PPP, LMP, and TDS protocol dissectors by selecting Edit->Protocols... and deselecting them from the list.