Vulnerabilities > CVE-2017-2523 - Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer vulnerability in Apple products
Attack vector
NETWORK Attack complexity
LOW Privileges required
NONE Confidentiality impact
HIGH Integrity impact
HIGH Availability impact
HIGH Summary
An issue was discovered in certain Apple products. iOS before 10.3.2 is affected. macOS before 10.12.5 is affected. tvOS before 10.2.1 is affected. watchOS before 3.2.2 is affected. The issue involves the "Foundation" component. It allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (memory corruption and application crash) via crafted data.
Vulnerable Configurations
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.
- 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.
Exploit-Db
| description | Apple iOS/macOS - NSUnarchiver Heap Corruption Due to Lack of Bounds Checking in [NSBuiltinCharacterSet initWithCoder:]. CVE-2017-2523. Dos exploit for Multi... |
| file | exploits/multiple/dos/42050.txt |
| id | EDB-ID:42050 |
| last seen | 2017-05-25 |
| modified | 2017-05-23 |
| platform | multiple |
| port | |
| published | 2017-05-23 |
| reporter | Exploit-DB |
| source | https://www.exploit-db.com/download/42050/ |
| title | Apple iOS/macOS - NSUnarchiver Heap Corruption Due to Lack of Bounds Checking in [NSBuiltinCharacterSet initWithCoder:] |
| type | dos |
Seebug
| bulletinFamily | exploit |
| description | Via NSUnarchiver we can read NSBuiltinCharacterSet with a controlled serialized state. It reads a controlled int using decodeValueOfObjCType:"i" then either passes it to CFCharacterSetGetPredefined or uses it directly to manipulate __NSBuiltinSetTable. Neither path has any bounds checking and the index is used to maniupulate c arrays of pointers. Attached python script will generate a serialized NSBuiltinCharacterSet with a value of 42 for the character set identifier. tested on MacOS 10.12.3 (16D32) [builtincharset.zip](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/attachment?aid=274409) |
| id | SSV:93159 |
| last seen | 2017-11-19 |
| modified | 2017-05-27 |
| published | 2017-05-27 |
| reporter | Root |
| title | Apple MacOS NSUnarchiver Heap Corruption(CVE-2017-2523) |