BID:3573

Berkeley Parallel Make Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Info

Berkeley Parallel Make Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Bugtraq ID:	3573
Class:	Boundary Condition Error
CVE:
Remote:	No
Local:	Yes
Published:	Nov 21 2001 12:00AM
Updated:	Nov 21 2001 12:00AM
Credit:	This vulnerability was first announced to Bugtraq by Paul Starzetz <[email protected]> on November 21, 2001.
Vulnerable:	SuSE Linux 7.2 SuSE Linux 7.1 x86 SuSE Linux 7.1 ppc SuSE Linux 7.1 alpha SuSE Linux 7.0 ppc SuSE Linux 7.0 alpha SuSE Linux 7.0 SuSE Linux 6.4 ppc SuSE Linux 6.4 alpha SuSE Linux 6.4

Not Vulnerable:	Slackware Linux 8.0 Slackware Linux 7.1 Redhat Linux 7.2 i386 Redhat Linux 7.2 alpha

Discussion

Berkeley Parallel Make Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Parallel Make (pmake) is a freely available version of the make program, originally distributed with Berkeley Unix. It is designed to execute Makefiles and build programs.

pmake is not typically setuid root, although some Linux distributions default to installing it this way. When a Makefile is executed by pmake, certain user-defined variables can be set in the Makefile by the user. One such variable is the shell definition variable, or .SHELL. By supplying a string of greater than 512 characters in the check= field of the .SHELL variable, it is possible to overwrite the return address, and execute of arbitrary code with root privileges.