FreeBSD VuXML: Documenting security issues in FreeBSD and the FreeBSD Ports Collection

elm -- remote buffer overflow in Expires header

Affected packages
elm < 2.5.8

Details

VuXML ID f66e011d-13ff-11da-af41-0004614cc33d
Discovery 2005-08-20
Entry 2005-08-23

Ulf Harnhammar has discovered a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in Elm e-mail client when parsing the Expires header of an e-mail message:

The attacker only needs to send the victim an e-mail message. When the victim with that message in his or her inbox starts Elm or simply views the inbox in an already started copy of Elm, the buffer overflow will happen immediately. The overflow is stack-based, and it gives full control over EIP, EBP and EBX. It is caused by a bad sscanf(3) call, using a format string containing "%s" to copy from a long char array to a shorter array.

References

URL http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2005-08/0688.html