Vulnerabilities > CVE-2014-9488 - Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer vulnerability in multiple products

047910
CVSS 10.0 - CRITICAL
Attack vector
NETWORK
Attack complexity
LOW
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
COMPLETE
Integrity impact
COMPLETE
Availability impact
COMPLETE
network
low complexity
opensuse
gnu
CWE-119
critical
nessus

Summary

The is_utf8_well_formed function in GNU less before 475 allows remote attackers to have unspecified impact via malformed UTF-8 characters, which triggers an out-of-bounds read.

Vulnerable Configurations

Part Description Count
OS
Opensuse
2
Application
Gnu
5

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.
  • Overflow Buffers
    Buffer Overflow attacks target improper or missing bounds checking on buffer operations, typically triggered by input injected by an attacker. As a consequence, an attacker is able to write past the boundaries of allocated buffer regions in memory, causing a program crash or potentially redirection of execution as per the attackers' choice.
  • Client-side Injection-induced Buffer Overflow
    This type of attack exploits a buffer overflow vulnerability in targeted client software through injection of malicious content from a custom-built hostile service.
  • Filter Failure through Buffer Overflow
    In this attack, the idea is to cause an active filter to fail by causing an oversized transaction. An attacker may try to feed overly long input strings to the program in an attempt to overwhelm the filter (by causing a buffer overflow) and hoping that the filter does not fail securely (i.e. the user input is let into the system unfiltered).
  • MIME Conversion
    An attacker exploits a weakness in the MIME conversion routine to cause a buffer overflow and gain control over the mail server machine. The MIME system is designed to allow various different information formats to be interpreted and sent via e-mail. Attack points exist when data are converted to MIME compatible format and back.

Nessus

  • NASL familyHuawei Local Security Checks
    NASL idEULEROS_SA-2019-2602.NASL
    descriptionAccording to the version of the less package installed, the EulerOS installation on the remote host is affected by the following vulnerability : - The is_utf8_well_formed function in GNU less before 475 allows remote attackers to have unspecified impact via malformed UTF-8 characters, which triggers an out-of-bounds read.(CVE-2014-9488) Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the EulerOS security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.
    last seen2020-05-08
    modified2019-12-18
    plugin id132137
    published2019-12-18
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2019-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/132137
    titleEulerOS 2.0 SP3 : less (EulerOS-SA-2019-2602)
  • NASL familyHuawei Local Security Checks
    NASL idEULEROS_SA-2020-1238.NASL
    descriptionAccording to the version of the less package installed, the EulerOS Virtualization for ARM 64 installation on the remote host is affected by the following vulnerability : - The is_utf8_well_formed function in GNU less before 475 allows remote attackers to have unspecified impact via malformed UTF-8 characters, which triggers an out-of-bounds read.(CVE-2014-9488) Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the EulerOS security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.
    last seen2020-03-19
    modified2020-03-13
    plugin id134527
    published2020-03-13
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/134527
    titleEulerOS Virtualization for ARM 64 3.0.2.0 : less (EulerOS-SA-2020-1238)
  • NASL familyFedora Local Security Checks
    NASL idFEDORA_2015-9325.NASL
    descriptionbetter fix of out of bounds read access in is_utf8_well_formed() CVE-2014-9488 out of bounds read access in is_utf8_well_formed() CVE-2014-9488 Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.
    last seen2020-06-05
    modified2015-06-11
    plugin id84102
    published2015-06-11
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2015-2020 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/84102
    titleFedora 21 : less-471-4.fc21 (2015-9325)
  • NASL familyFedora Local Security Checks
    NASL idFEDORA_2015-9357.NASL
    descriptionbetter fix of out of bounds read access in is_utf8_well_formed() CVE-2014-9488 out of bounds read access in is_utf8_well_formed() CVE-2014-9488 Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.
    last seen2020-06-05
    modified2015-06-09
    plugin id84042
    published2015-06-09
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2015-2020 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/84042
    titleFedora 22 : less-471-4.fc22 (2015-9357)
  • NASL familySuSE Local Security Checks
    NASL idOPENSUSE-2015-260.NASL
    descriptionless was updated to fix one minor security issue : Malformed UTF-8 data could have caused an out of bounds read in the UTF-8 decoding routines, causing an invalid read access. (bnc#921719) (CVE-2014-9488)
    last seen2020-06-05
    modified2015-03-26
    plugin id82245
    published2015-03-26
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2015-2020 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/82245
    titleopenSUSE Security Update : less (openSUSE-2015-260)
  • NASL familyMandriva Local Security Checks
    NASL idMANDRIVA_MDVSA-2015-199.NASL
    descriptionUpdated less package fixes security vulnerability : Malformed UTF-8 data could have caused an out of bounds read in the UTF-8 decoding routines, causing an invalid read access (CVE-2014-9488).
    last seen2020-06-01
    modified2020-06-02
    plugin id82685
    published2015-04-10
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2015-2019 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/82685
    titleMandriva Linux Security Advisory : less (MDVSA-2015:199)
  • NASL familyHuawei Local Security Checks
    NASL idEULEROS_SA-2019-2475.NASL
    descriptionAccording to the version of the less package installed, the EulerOS installation on the remote host is affected by the following vulnerability : - The is_utf8_well_formed function in GNU less before 475 allows remote attackers to have unspecified impact via malformed UTF-8 characters, which triggers an out-of-bounds read.(CVE-2014-9488) Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the EulerOS security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.
    last seen2020-05-08
    modified2019-12-04
    plugin id131628
    published2019-12-04
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2019-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/131628
    titleEulerOS 2.0 SP2 : less (EulerOS-SA-2019-2475)
  • NASL familyHuawei Local Security Checks
    NASL idEULEROS_SA-2019-2164.NASL
    descriptionAccording to the version of the less package installed, the EulerOS installation on the remote host is affected by the following vulnerability : - An out of bound read, with a maximum of 5 bytes, was found in the way the is_utf8_well_formed() function parsed UTF-8 characters. If less was to be recompiled with an address sanitizer, a specially crafted input could crash less.(CVE-2014-9488) Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the EulerOS security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.
    last seen2020-05-08
    modified2019-11-12
    plugin id130873
    published2019-11-12
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2019-2020 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/130873
    titleEulerOS 2.0 SP5 : less (EulerOS-SA-2019-2164)