Bugtraq mailing list archives
Decompression Bombs
From: Matthias Leu <mleu () aerasec de>
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 18:04:09 +0100
As a followup to http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/9393/, where we pointed out vulnerabilities of some antivirus-gateways while decompressing bzip2-bombs, we were interested in the behaviour of various applications that process compressed data.
It looks as if not only bzip2 bombs, but also decompression bombs in general might cause problems. Compression is used in many applications, but hardly any maximum size limits are checked during the decompression of untrusted content.
We've created several bombs (bzip2, gzip, zip, mime-embedded bombs, png and gif graphics, openoffice zip bombs). With these we tested some more applications like additional antivirus engines, various web browsers, openoffice.org, and the Gimp.
As a result, much more applications as we thought crashed. The manufacturers of software should care more about the processing of untrusted input.
For details see our full advisory, written by Dr. Peter Bieringer: http://www.aerasec.de/security/advisories/decompression-bomb-vulnerability.html
Best regards, Dr. Matthias Leu -- AERAsec Network Services and Security GmbH Wagenberger Strasse 1 D-85662 Hohenbrunn, Germany http://www.aerasec.de
Current thread:
- Decompression Bombs Matthias Leu (Feb 03)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Decompression Bombs David Bachtel (Feb 06)
- RE: Decompression Bombs Myron Davis (Feb 09)
- Re: Decompression Bombs Brian Dessent (Feb 09)
- Re: Decompression Bombs Myron Davis (Feb 11)
- Re: Decompression Bombs Chris Green (Feb 09)
- RE: Decompression Bombs Myron Davis (Feb 09)
- RE: Decompression Bombs SBNelson (Feb 09)
- Re: Decompression Bombs Bipin Gautam . (Feb 11)