CVE-2021-36159
Linux Alpine vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Overview

libfetch before 2021-07-26, as used in apk-tools, xbps, and other products, contains a vulnerability in its handling of numeric strings for FTP and HTTP protocols. The vulnerability was discovered in the FTP passive mode implementation where the software mishandles numeric string parsing (MITRE CVE).

Technical details

The vulnerability stems from an out-of-bounds read condition in the FTP passive mode implementation. The issue occurs because strtol is used to parse numbers into address bytes without properly checking if the line ends prematurely. The for-loop condition checks for the '\0' terminator one byte too late due to premature p++ operation (Alpine Issue).

Impact

The vulnerability allows a malicious FTP server to control the connection buffer size, which can be increased until a newline is encountered. This could potentially lead to information leaks as the buffer can be moved into more interesting areas within the address space, with parsed numbers becoming available to the server in the form of new TCP connection port numbers or IPv6 addresses (Alpine Issue).

Mitigation and workarounds

The issue was fixed in libfetch after 2021-07-26. The fix includes proper boundary checks for numeric string parsing and validation of buffer limits (FreeBSD Commit).

Additional resources


SourceThis report was generated using AI

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