Advisories

libssh2 Heap Buffer Overflow via ETM Cipher Negotiation

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severity
high
date
Affecting
  • libssh2 <= 1.11.1, fixed in commit 42e33d8

CWE
  • CWE-122 Heap-based Buffer Overflow
CVSS
7.7
CVSS V4 Vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Credit
VladimirEliTokarev
Description
libssh2 through 1.11.1, fixed in commit 42e33d8, contains a pre-authentication heap buffer overflow vulnerability that allows a malicious SSH server to corrupt heap metadata in any connecting client by sending a packet with a packet_length smaller than the cipher's block size during Encrypt-then-MAC cipher negotiation. In the fullpacket() function in src/transport.c, the ETM path allocates a buffer of packet_length bytes but copies blocksize minus one bytes via memcpy, causing an overflow that on 32-bit glibc writes attacker-controlled bytes into an adjacent chunk's SIZE field, enabling tcache bin confusion, overlapping live objects, and function pointer overwrite during the session handshake before authentication.

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