Bug 102569 - (CVE-2005-2550) VUL-0: CVE-2005-2550: evolution format string bugs
(CVE-2005-2550)
VUL-0: CVE-2005-2550: evolution format string bugs
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Classification: Novell Products
Product: SUSE Security Incidents
Classification: Novell Products
Component: Incidents
unspecified
Other All
: P2 - High : Critical
: ---
Assigned To: Michael Schröder
Security Team bot
CVE-2005-2550: CVSS v2 Base Score: 7....
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2005-08-08 12:58 UTC by Ludwig Nussel
Modified: 2021-11-04 16:25 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Found By: Other
Services Priority:
Business Priority:
Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: ---
IT Deployment: ---


Attachments
evolution-data.zip (1.97 KB, application/x-zip)
2005-08-08 13:00 UTC, Ludwig Nussel
Details

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Description Ludwig Nussel 2005-08-08 12:58:02 UTC
We received the following report via suse-security.
This issue is not public yet, please keep any information about it inside SUSE.

   2 local non-root user
  +1 default package
  +1 default active
  -1 user interaction
  +1 command execution

Total Score: 4 (Moderate)

Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 08:44:11 -0400
From: JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com>
To: Neeti Agarwal <NAGARWAL@novell.com>, Parag Goel <pgoel@novell.com>,
	Harish <kharish@novell.com>
Cc: security@suse.de
Subject: [security@suse.de] [Fwd: Sitic Vulnerability Advisory: SA05-001
	Evolution multiple remote format string bugs]

Needs to be analyzed for versions affected.

-JP
-- 
JP Rosevear <jpr@novell.com>
Novell, Inc.

Content-Description: Forwarded message - Sitic Vulnerability Advisory: SA05-001 Evolution multiple remote format string bugs
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 14:43:43 +0200
From: sitic@pts.se
To: security@gnome.org, jpr@novell.com
Subject: Sitic Vulnerability Advisory: SA05-001 Evolution multiple remote
	format string bugs

* Notice to Vendor *


Date: 2005-08-04

We are bringing to your attention one or more potential security
vulnerabilities
affecting one of your products.

In accordance with the SITIC Vulnerability Disclosure Process, such
information
is supplied in the form of preliminary SITIC Vulnerability Advisories,
to be
completed for later public release by SITIC.

Please find attached:

* List of preliminary SITIC Vulnerability Advisories:
  - SA05-001 Evolution multiple remote format string bugs

* List of additional files:
  - Evolution-data.zip containing
	evolution.formstring.patch
	evolution.ldif
	evolution.tasklist.txt
	evolution.vcf


In the initial stage we ask you, the vendor, to:
1) within 5 days confirm receipt of this notice
2) within 5 days confirm which products are affected by the
vulnerability
3) within 5 days provide preliminary date(s) for availability of
remedies

using the contact information below.

The aim for this process is a coordinated release of a SITIC
Vulnerability
Advisory for each concerned vulnerability, complete with instructions
for
eliminating or mitigating the vulnerability, agreed between the vendor
and
SITIC. Any queries that arise from this issue may be addressed to SITIC
with a subject line that includes the SITIC Vulnerability Advisory
Reference
as tracking code.

We kindly ask you to discuss with SITIC prior to any further
distribution.

We are looking forward to working with you on this issue.


Contact information:

Swedish IT Incident Centre, SITIC
P O Box 5398, SE-102 49 Stockholm, Sweden
Telephone: +46-8-678 5799
Email: sitic at pts dot se
http://www.sitic.se

Sitic PGP key:

http://www.sitic.se/dokument/pgpkey.asc



About SITIC:

The Swedish IT Incident Centre within the National Post and Telecom
Agency has
the task to support society in working with protection against IT
incidents.
SITIC facilitates exchange of information regarding IT incidents between
organisations in society, and disseminates information about new
problems
which potentially may impede the functionality of IT systems. In
addition,
SITIC provides information and advice regarding proactive measures and
compiles and publishes statistics.


Content-Description: SA05-001.txt
* SITIC Vulnerability Advisory *

           Advisory Name: Evolution multiple remote format string bugs
      Advisory Reference: SA05-001
 Date of initial release: Preliminary 2005-08-04
                 Product: Evolution 1.5, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
                Platform: Linux, BSD systems, Unix
                  Effect: Remote code execution
Vulnerability Identifier: Not assigned


Overview:

Evolution suffers from several format string bugs when handling data from
remote sources. These bugs lead to crashes or the execution of arbitrary
assembly language code.


Details:

1) The first format string bug occurs when viewing the full vCard data
attached to an e-mail message.

When opening an e-mail message, only a compact view of some of the fields
from the vCard is displayed, and this does not trigger the vulnerability.
To be affected, the user must click on Show Full vCard or perform similar
actions such as clicking on Save in Addressbook and then viewing the saved
data under the Contacts tab.

Why is this important? An attacker might notice that an organisation uses
Evolution, for instance after seeing the "X-Mailer: Evolution x.y.z" e-mail
header in their e-mails. He or she could then send out e-mail messages with
malicious vCards to many e-mail accounts at the organisation, in the hope
that some of the recipients will view the full vCard data sooner or later,
thus exposing the organisation to this format string bug.


2) The second format string bug occurs when displaying contact data fetched
from remote LDAP servers.


3) The third format string bug occurs when displaying task list data from
remote servers.


4) The fourth, and least serious, format string bug occurs when the user
goes to the Calendars tab to save task list data that is vulnerable to
problem 3 above. Other calendar entries that do not come from task lists
are also affected.


* * * FOR GNOME ONLY * * *

We have attached some example files, so you can test these vulnerabilities.
In all cases, Evolution will crash after performing an action similar to
printf("%n%n%n%n...");.

The attached evolution.vcf file will exhibit problem 1, when you e-mail it
to an Evolution user, open that e-mail message in Evolution, and click on
Show Full vCard.

The attached evolution.ldif file will exhibit problem 2, when you add it to
an LDAP server, configure Evolution to use that server, and then search for
and open the data from the file in Evolution.

The attached evolution.tasklist.txt file will exhibit problem 3, when you
put it on a web server, configure Evolution to use that server, and then
open the task from the file in Evolution.

Problem 4 can be tested by configuring the system to exhibit problem 3 above,
then selecting the Calendars tab, right-clicking on the task from the web
server, and selecting Save as and a file name. It also affects right-clicking
and saving other calendar entries that do not come from task lists.

You may also want to look into possible format string bugs when calling the
em_format_format_error(), camel_filter_driver_log(), camel_stream_printf()
and camel_exception_setv() functions. Some of the calls to them look a
bit suspicious.

* * * END * * *


Mitigating factors:

Users that never use any of the vulnerable features in Evolution are not
affected.


Affected versions:

  o  Evolution 1.5 to Evolution 2.3.6.1


Recommendations:

To be defined


Patch information:

We have attached a patch called evolution.formstring.patch that corrects
all mentioned issues. Please review it. 


Acknowledgments:

These vulnerabilities were discovered by Ulf Harnhammar for SITIC, Swedish
IT Incident Centre.


Contact information:

Swedish IT Incident Centre, SITIC
P O Box 5398, SE-102 49 Stockholm, Sweden
Telephone: +46-8-678 5799
Email: sitic at pts dot se
http://www.sitic.se/


Revision history:

Preliminary 2005-08-04


About SITIC:

The Swedish IT Incident Centre within the National Post and Telecom Agency
has the task to support society in working with protection against IT
incidents. SITIC facilitates exchange of information regarding IT incidents
between organisations in society, and disseminates information about new
problems which potentially may impede the functionality of IT systems. In
addition, SITIC provides information and advice regarding proactive measures
and compiles and publishes statistics.


Disclaimer:

The decision to follow or act on information or advice contained in this
Vulnerability Advisory is the responsibility of each user or organisation.
SITIC accepts no responsibility for any errors or omissions contained within
this Vulnerability Advisory, nor for any consequences which may arise from
following or acting on information or advice contained herein.
Comment 1 Ludwig Nussel 2005-08-08 13:00:21 UTC
Created attachment 45124 [details]
evolution-data.zip

I didn't check what's inside. be careful.
Comment 2 Marcus Meissner 2005-08-12 13:31:19 UTC
ping ... what distros are affected? 
 
please provide fixed packages for those... 
Comment 3 Marcus Meissner 2005-08-18 11:33:14 UTC
hello? this is a critical issue, please provide an answer and fixed packages 
ASAP. 
Comment 4 Harish Krishnaswamy 2005-08-19 03:40:33 UTC
The patches provided in the advisory notification had long been committed into 
the CVS on the 5th of August. The fixes are already available in the evolution
2.3.7 package available on Beta 2.

Marcus : What about prior SuSE releases that ship Evolution 2.2/2.0. How can I
deliver updated packages towards them ?

Krishnan : Can the QA verify the fixes and see if there are related cases missed
by the advisory that need attention ?
Comment 6 Ludwig Nussel 2005-08-29 12:16:11 UTC
could someone please provide fixed packages? 
Comment 7 Marcus Meissner 2005-09-01 16:16:06 UTC
why is this not going forward? 
 
it is a critical, remote exploitable problem? 
 
Do we just have 1 GNOME packager here (sbrabec, who is on vacation)? 
Comment 8 Harish Krishnaswamy 2005-09-02 03:42:41 UTC
As noted above, the fix has long been available since Beta 2. This was merely
waiting for confirmation from the QA. Closing this bug resolved.
Comment 9 Ludwig Nussel 2005-09-02 06:46:13 UTC
wtf? According to the report old evolution versions are affected. So please   
follow the procedure described in #5 and submit fixed packages. 
   
CAN-2005-2549, CAN-2005-2550  
Comment 10 Harish Krishnaswamy 2005-09-02 10:07:38 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> wtf? According to the report old evolution versions are affected. So please   
> follow the procedure described in #5 and submit fixed packages. 
>    
> CAN-2005-2549, CAN-2005-2550  

Went through the page you pointed out - I am not familiar with this process
since I have not submitted packages directly for SuSE before. 
For records, the fixes are already available upstream on the CVS on all stable
branches corresponding to Evo 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4 branches. (The other versions
that are marked are development snapshots from HEAD and hence are not 'release
versions' of any distro.)

The page refers to 'package maintainer' - not sure if this would be me (project
maintainer) or if Gary Ekker who submits the gnome packages for SuSE.
It also adds that the patchinfo files would be handled by security team, not the
package maintainer. So, can this now be assigned to the security team or is
something else expected from my side ? Kindly clarify the same. Would be happy
to do the needful.
Comment 11 Ludwig Nussel 2005-09-02 10:22:26 UTC
I don't care about evolution cvs. We need packages in autobuild. Who submits  
them doesn't matter from the security-team's point of view. 
  
'Patchinfo' is the metadata required for the maintenance process. We can  
create it as soon as "the package maintainer" tells us which packages exactly  
are affected in which distributions. 
Comment 12 Harish Krishnaswamy 2005-09-02 10:53:59 UTC
(In reply to comment #11)
> I don't care about evolution cvs.
 Well, I do. 

> We need packages in autobuild. Who submits  
> them doesn't matter from the security-team's point of view. 
I do not know 'how'.Hence, I asked.
>   
> 'Patchinfo' is the metadata required for the maintenance process. We can  
> create it as soon as "the package maintainer" tells us which packages exactly  
> are affected in which distributions. 

Thanks for the information. 
The affected packages have been listed in my earlier comment. 
Requesting Gary Ekker to submit the packages as required. 

Comment 13 Swamp Workflow Management 2005-09-02 11:13:12 UTC
MaintenanceTracker started with SWAMPID=2202,  available at https://swamp.suse.de/webswamp/swamp/template/DisplayWorkflow.vm/workflowid/2202
Comment 14 Gary Ekker 2005-09-07 17:08:58 UTC
Packages submitted for 9.2, 9.3, sles9-sld.
Comment 15 Andreas Jaeger 2005-09-11 14:46:39 UTC
Gary, Packages are missing for 9.0 and 9.1. 
Comment 16 Marcus Meissner 2005-09-12 14:45:56 UTC
from above comments it is not clear to me... 
 
Is Evolution < 2.0 affected by this problem or not? 
Comment 17 Gary Ekker 2005-09-12 15:55:40 UTC
The problem only occurs in evolution-1.5.0 and greater. This is not necessary
for 9.0 and 9.1.
Comment 18 Marcus Meissner 2005-09-12 16:21:54 UTC
Then the evolution.patch.9.0 is not necessary and we are all complete. 
 
mls, please checkin. 
Comment 19 Ludwig Nussel 2005-09-14 14:44:18 UTC
updates released  
Comment 20 Thomas Biege 2009-10-13 21:38:26 UTC
CVE-2005-2550: CVSS v2 Base Score: 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P)