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A race condition was found in the Linux kernel's IP framework for transforming packets (XFRM subsystem) when multiple calls to xfrm_probe_algs occurred simultaneously. This flaw could allow a local attacker to potentially trigger an out-of-bounds write or leak kernel heap memory by performing an out-of-bounds read and copying it into a socket.
CVSS 3.1 Base Score 7. CVSS Attack Vector: local. CVSS Attack Complexity: high. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).
This code could be used in an e-commerce application that supports transfers between accounts. It takes the total amount of the transfer, sends it to the new account, and deducts the amount from the original account.
NotifyUser("New balance: $newbalance");FatalError("Bad Transfer Amount");FatalError("Insufficient Funds");A race condition could occur between the calls to GetBalanceFromDatabase() and SendNewBalanceToDatabase().
Suppose the balance is initially 100.00. An attack could be constructed as follows:
PROGRAM-2 sends a request to update the database, setting the balance to 99.00At this stage, the attacker should have a balance of 19.00 (due to 81.00 worth of transfers), but the balance is 99.00, as recorded in the database.
To prevent this weakness, the programmer has several options, including using a lock to prevent multiple simultaneous requests to the web application, or using a synchronization mechanism that includes all the code between GetBalanceFromDatabase() and SendNewBalanceToDatabase().
The following function attempts to acquire a lock in order to perform operations on a shared resource.
}
pthread_mutex_unlock(mutex);/* access shared resource */However, the code does not check the value returned by pthread_mutex_lock() for errors. If pthread_mutex_lock() cannot acquire the mutex for any reason, the function may introduce a race condition into the program and result in undefined behavior.
In order to avoid data races, correctly written programs must check the result of thread synchronization functions and appropriately handle all errors, either by attempting to recover from them or reporting it to higher levels.
}
return pthread_mutex_unlock(mutex);return result;/* access shared resource */Suppose a processor's Memory Management Unit (MMU) has 5 other shadow MMUs to distribute its workload for its various cores. Each MMU has the start address and end address of "accessible" memory. Any time this accessible range changes (as per the processor's boot status), the main MMU sends an update message to all the shadow MMUs.
Suppose the interconnect fabric does not prioritize such "update" packets over other general traffic packets. This introduces a race condition. If an attacker can flood the target with enough messages so that some of those attack packets reach the target before the new access ranges gets updated, then the attacker can leverage this scenario.
The following code attempts to save four different identification numbers into an array.
id_sequence[3] = 456;In the following example, it is possible to request that memcpy move a much larger segment of memory than assumed:
}
.../* if chunk info is valid, return the size of usable memory,* else, return -1 to indicate an error*/...If returnChunkSize() happens to encounter an error it will return -1. Notice that the return value is not checked before the memcpy operation (CWE-252), so -1 can be passed as the size argument to memcpy() (CWE-805). Because memcpy() assumes that the value is unsigned, it will be interpreted as MAXINT-1 (CWE-195), and therefore will copy far more memory than is likely available to the destination buffer (CWE-787, CWE-788).
This example takes an IP address from a user, verifies that it is well formed and then looks up the hostname and copies it into a buffer.
}
strcpy(hostname, hp->h_name);/*routine that ensures user_supplied_addr is in the right format for conversion */This function allocates a buffer of 64 bytes to store the hostname, however there is no guarantee that the hostname will not be larger than 64 bytes. If an attacker specifies an address which resolves to a very large hostname, then we may overwrite sensitive data or even relinquish control flow to the attacker.
Note that this example also contains an unchecked return value (CWE-252) that can lead to a NULL pointer dereference (CWE-476).
This example applies an encoding procedure to an input string and stores it into a buffer.
}
return dst_buf;die("user string too long, die evil hacker!");
else dst_buf[dst_index++] = user_supplied_string[i];dst_buf[dst_index++] = ';';
/* encode to < */The programmer attempts to encode the ampersand character in the user-controlled string, however the length of the string is validated before the encoding procedure is applied. Furthermore, the programmer assumes encoding expansion will only expand a given character by a factor of 4, while the encoding of the ampersand expands by 5. As a result, when the encoding procedure expands the string it is possible to overflow the destination buffer if the attacker provides a string of many ampersands.
In the following C/C++ example, a utility function is used to trim trailing whitespace from a character string. The function copies the input string to a local character string and uses a while statement to remove the trailing whitespace by moving backward through the string and overwriting whitespace with a NUL character.
}
return retMessage;// copy input string to a temporary stringmessage[index] = strMessage[index];// trim trailing whitespacelen--;// return string without trailing whitespaceHowever, this function can cause a buffer underwrite if the input character string contains all whitespace. On some systems the while statement will move backwards past the beginning of a character string and will call the isspace() function on an address outside of the bounds of the local buffer.
The following is an example of code that may result in a buffer underwrite, if find() returns a negative value to indicate that ch is not found in srcBuf:
}...If the index to srcBuf is somehow under user control, this is an arbitrary write-what-where condition.
In the following code, the method retrieves a value from an array at a specific array index location that is given as an input parameter to the method
}
return value;// check that the array index is less than the maximum// length of the array
value = array[index];// get the value at the specified index of the array// if array index is invalid then output error message// and return value indicating errorvalue = -1;However, this method only verifies that the given array index is less than the maximum length of the array but does not check for the minimum value (CWE-839). This will allow a negative value to be accepted as the input array index, which will result in a out of bounds read (CWE-125) and may allow access to sensitive memory. The input array index should be checked to verify that is within the maximum and minimum range required for the array (CWE-129). In this example the if statement should be modified to include a minimum range check, as shown below.
...// check that the array index is within the correct// range of values for the arrayIn the following Java snippet, methods are defined to get and set a long field in an instance of a class that is shared across multiple threads. Because operations on double and long are nonatomic in Java, concurrent access may cause unexpected behavior. Thus, all operations on long and double fields should be synchronized.
}return someLongValue;someLongValue = l;This code tries to obtain a lock for a file, then writes to it.
fclose($logFile);}//attempt to get logfile lockflock($logfile, LOCK_UN);// unlock logfileprint "Could not obtain lock on logFile.log, message not recorded\n";PHP by default will wait indefinitely until a file lock is released. If an attacker is able to obtain the file lock, this code will pause execution, possibly leading to denial of service for other users. Note that in this case, if an attacker can perform an flock() on the file, they may already have privileges to destroy the log file. However, this still impacts the execution of other programs that depend on flock().
The following function attempts to acquire a lock in order to perform operations on a shared resource.
}
pthread_mutex_unlock(mutex);/* access shared resource */However, the code does not check the value returned by pthread_mutex_lock() for errors. If pthread_mutex_lock() cannot acquire the mutex for any reason the function may introduce a race condition into the program and result in undefined behavior.
In order to avoid data races correctly written programs must check the result of thread synchronization functions and appropriately handle all errors, either by attempting to recover from them or reporting it to higher levels.
}
return pthread_mutex_unlock(mutex);return result;/* access shared resource */It may seem that the following bit of code achieves thread safety while avoiding unnecessary synchronization...
return helper;
}}helper = new Helper();The programmer wants to guarantee that only one Helper() object is ever allocated, but does not want to pay the cost of synchronization every time this code is called.
Suppose that helper is not initialized. Then, thread A sees that helper==null and enters the synchronized block and begins to execute:
helper = new Helper();If a second thread, thread B, takes over in the middle of this call and helper has not finished running the constructor, then thread B may make calls on helper while its fields hold incorrect values.
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