Vulnerabilities > CVE-2009-3627 - Improper Input Validation vulnerability in Derrick Oswald Html-Parser

047910
CVSS 4.3 - MEDIUM
Attack vector
NETWORK
Attack complexity
MEDIUM
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
NONE
Integrity impact
NONE
Availability impact
PARTIAL
network
derrick-oswald
CWE-20
nessus

Summary

The decode_entities function in util.c in HTML-Parser before 3.63 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) via an incomplete SGML numeric character reference, which triggers generation of an invalid UTF-8 character.

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Buffer Overflow via Environment Variables
    This attack pattern involves causing a buffer overflow through manipulation of environment variables. Once the attacker finds that they can modify an environment variable, they may try to overflow associated buffers. This attack leverages implicit trust often placed in environment variables.
  • Server Side Include (SSI) Injection
    An attacker can use Server Side Include (SSI) Injection to send code to a web application that then gets executed by the web server. Doing so enables the attacker to achieve similar results to Cross Site Scripting, viz., arbitrary code execution and information disclosure, albeit on a more limited scale, since the SSI directives are nowhere near as powerful as a full-fledged scripting language. Nonetheless, the attacker can conveniently gain access to sensitive files, such as password files, and execute shell commands.
  • Cross Zone Scripting
    An attacker is able to cause a victim to load content into their web-browser that bypasses security zone controls and gain access to increased privileges to execute scripting code or other web objects such as unsigned ActiveX controls or applets. This is a privilege elevation attack targeted at zone-based web-browser security. In a zone-based model, pages belong to one of a set of zones corresponding to the level of privilege assigned to that page. Pages in an untrusted zone would have a lesser level of access to the system and/or be restricted in the types of executable content it was allowed to invoke. In a cross-zone scripting attack, a page that should be assigned to a less privileged zone is granted the privileges of a more trusted zone. This can be accomplished by exploiting bugs in the browser, exploiting incorrect configuration in the zone controls, through a cross-site scripting attack that causes the attackers' content to be treated as coming from a more trusted page, or by leveraging some piece of system functionality that is accessible from both the trusted and less trusted zone. This attack differs from "Restful Privilege Escalation" in that the latter correlates to the inadequate securing of RESTful access methods (such as HTTP DELETE) on the server, while cross-zone scripting attacks the concept of security zones as implemented by a browser.
  • Cross Site Scripting through Log Files
    An attacker may leverage a system weakness where logs are susceptible to log injection to insert scripts into the system's logs. If these logs are later viewed by an administrator through a thin administrative interface and the log data is not properly HTML encoded before being written to the page, the attackers' scripts stored in the log will be executed in the administrative interface with potentially serious consequences. This attack pattern is really a combination of two other attack patterns: log injection and stored cross site scripting.
  • Command Line Execution through SQL Injection
    An attacker uses standard SQL injection methods to inject data into the command line for execution. This could be done directly through misuse of directives such as MSSQL_xp_cmdshell or indirectly through injection of data into the database that would be interpreted as shell commands. Sometime later, an unscrupulous backend application (or could be part of the functionality of the same application) fetches the injected data stored in the database and uses this data as command line arguments without performing proper validation. The malicious data escapes that data plane by spawning new commands to be executed on the host.

Nessus

  • NASL familySuSE Local Security Checks
    NASL idSUSE_PERL-HTML-PARSER-6622.NASL
    descriptionSpecially crafted HTML documents could cause perl-HTML-Parser to run into an endless loop. (CVE-2009-3627)
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id49915
    published2010-10-11
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2010-2019 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/49915
    titleSuSE 10 Security Update : perl-HTML-Parser (ZYPP Patch Number 6622)
    code
    #%NASL_MIN_LEVEL 80502
    #
    # (C) Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    #
    # The text description of this plugin is (C) Novell, Inc.
    #
    
    include("compat.inc");
    
    if (description)
    {
      script_id(49915);
      script_version ("1.7");
      script_cvs_date("Date: 2019/10/25 13:36:37");
    
      script_cve_id("CVE-2009-3627");
    
      script_name(english:"SuSE 10 Security Update : perl-HTML-Parser (ZYPP Patch Number 6622)");
      script_summary(english:"Checks rpm output for the updated package");
    
      script_set_attribute(
        attribute:"synopsis", 
        value:"The remote SuSE 10 host is missing a security-related patch."
      );
      script_set_attribute(
        attribute:"description", 
        value:
    "Specially crafted HTML documents could cause perl-HTML-Parser to run
    into an endless loop. (CVE-2009-3627)"
      );
      script_set_attribute(
        attribute:"see_also",
        value:"http://support.novell.com/security/cve/CVE-2009-3627.html"
      );
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"solution", value:"Apply ZYPP patch number 6622.");
      script_set_cvss_base_vector("CVSS2#AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P");
      script_cwe_id(20);
    
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_type", value:"local");
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"cpe", value:"cpe:/o:suse:suse_linux");
    
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"patch_publication_date", value:"2009/11/02");
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_publication_date", value:"2010/10/11");
      script_end_attributes();
    
      script_category(ACT_GATHER_INFO);
      script_copyright(english:"This script is Copyright (C) 2010-2019 Tenable Network Security, Inc.");
      script_family(english:"SuSE Local Security Checks");
    
      script_dependencies("ssh_get_info.nasl");
      script_require_keys("Host/local_checks_enabled", "Host/cpu", "Host/SuSE/release", "Host/SuSE/rpm-list");
    
      exit(0);
    }
    
    
    include("global_settings.inc");
    include("rpm.inc");
    
    
    if (!get_kb_item("Host/local_checks_enabled")) exit(0, "Local checks are not enabled.");
    if (!get_kb_item("Host/SuSE/release")) exit(0, "The host is not running SuSE.");
    if (!get_kb_item("Host/SuSE/rpm-list")) exit(1, "Could not obtain the list of installed packages.");
    
    cpu = get_kb_item("Host/cpu");
    if (isnull(cpu)) exit(1, "Failed to determine the architecture type.");
    if (cpu >!< "x86_64" && cpu !~ "^i[3-6]86$") exit(1, "Local checks for SuSE 10 on the '"+cpu+"' architecture have not been implemented.");
    
    
    flag = 0;
    if (rpm_check(release:"SLED10", sp:3, reference:"perl-HTML-Parser-3.48-12.7.1")) flag++;
    if (rpm_check(release:"SLES10", sp:3, reference:"perl-HTML-Parser-3.48-12.7.1")) flag++;
    
    
    if (flag)
    {
      if (report_verbosity > 0) security_warning(port:0, extra:rpm_report_get());
      else security_warning(0);
      exit(0);
    }
    else exit(0, "The host is not affected.");
    
  • NASL familySuSE Local Security Checks
    NASL idSUSE_11_0_PERL-HTML-PARSER-091030.NASL
    descriptionSpecially crafted HTML documents could cause perl-HTML-Parser to run into an endless loop (CVE-2009-3627).
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id43082
    published2009-12-09
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2009-2019 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/43082
    titleopenSUSE Security Update : perl-HTML-Parser (perl-HTML-Parser-1491)
  • NASL familySuSE Local Security Checks
    NASL idSUSE_11_PERL-HTML-PARSER-091030.NASL
    descriptionSpecially crafted HTML documents could cause perl-HTML-Parser to run into an endless loop. (CVE-2009-3627)
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id43084
    published2009-12-09
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2009-2019 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/43084
    titleSuSE 11 Security Update : perl-HTML-Parser (SAT Patch Number 1495)
  • NASL familyDebian Local Security Checks
    NASL idDEBIAN_DSA-1923.NASL
    descriptionA denial of service vulnerability has been found in libhtml-parser-perl, a collection of modules to parse HTML in text documents which is used by several other projects like e.g. SpamAssassin. Mark Martinec discovered that the decode_entities() function will get stuck in an infinite loop when parsing certain HTML entities with invalid UTF-8 characters. An attacker can use this to perform denial of service attacks by submitting crafted HTML to an application using this functionality.
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id44788
    published2010-02-24
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2010-2019 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/44788
    titleDebian DSA-1923-1 : libhtml-parser-perl - denial of service
  • NASL familySuSE Local Security Checks
    NASL idSUSE_11_1_PERL-HTML-PARSER-091030.NASL
    descriptionSpecially crafted HTML documents could cause perl-HTML-Parser to run into an endless loop (CVE-2009-3627).
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id43083
    published2009-12-09
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2009-2019 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/43083
    titleopenSUSE Security Update : perl-HTML-Parser (perl-HTML-Parser-1491)
  • NASL familyFreeBSD Local Security Checks
    NASL idFREEBSD_PKG_68BDA678CAAB11DEA97EBE89DFD1042E.NASL
    descriptionCVE reports : The decode_entities function in util.c in HTML-Parser before 3.63 allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) via an incomplete SGML numeric character reference, which triggers generation of an invalid UTF-8 character.
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id42414
    published2009-11-09
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2009-2019 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/42414
    titleFreeBSD : p5-HTML-Parser -- denial of service (68bda678-caab-11de-a97e-be89dfd1042e)
  • NASL familySuSE Local Security Checks
    NASL idSUSE_PERL-HTML-PARSER-6621.NASL
    descriptionSpecially crafted HTML documents could cause perl-HTML-Parser to run into an endless loop. (CVE-2009-3627)
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id43086
    published2009-12-09
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2009-2019 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/43086
    titleSuSE 10 Security Update : perl-HTML-Parser (ZYPP Patch Number 6621)
  • NASL familyUbuntu Local Security Checks
    NASL idUBUNTU_USN-855-1.NASL
    descriptionMark Martinec discovered that HTML::Parser incorrectly handled strings with incomplete entities. An attacker could send specially crafted input to applications that use HTML::Parser and cause a denial of service. Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id42408
    published2009-11-06
    reporterUbuntu Security Notice (C) 2009-2019 Canonical, Inc. / NASL script (C) 2018 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/42408
    titleUbuntu 6.06 LTS / 8.04 LTS / 8.10 / 9.04 / 9.10 : libhtml-parser-perl vulnerability (USN-855-1)

Seebug

bulletinFamilyexploit
descriptionNo description provided by source.
idSSV:12591
last seen2017-11-19
modified2009-11-07
published2009-11-07
reporterRoot
sourcehttps://www.seebug.org/vuldb/ssvid-12591
titlelibhtml-parser-perl vulnerability USN-855-1

Statements

contributorMark J Cox
lastmodified2009-11-19
organizationRed Hat
statementThis issue does not affect Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, or 5. This flaw can only lead to a denial of service if perl-HTML-Parser is used in conjunction with perl 5.10.1. If perl-HTML-Parser is used with earlier versions of perl, this flaw does not lead to a denial of service.