Bug Id
6629836

Date of Workaround Release
11-Feb-2008

Date of Resolved Release
08-Aug-2008

Security Vulnerability in Solaris 10 Perl 5.8

1. Impact

An unprivileged local user may be able to cause a Perl application to crash, or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the Perl application due to a buffer overflow in the regular expression engine.

The ability to crash a Perl application is a type of Denial of Service (DoS). If the Perl application accepts input from remote users, the impact can be extended to include remote unprivileged users.

This issue is referenced in the following document:

    CVE-2007-5116 at http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2007-5116

2. Contributing Factors

This issue can occur in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

• Solaris 10 without patch 122239-03

x86 Platform

• Solaris 10 without patch 122240-03

Note: Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 are not affected by this issue.

This issue only affects Perl versions 5.8.0 and later. Solaris 10 ships with Perl 5.6.1 in "/usr/perl5/5.6.1/" and Perl 5.8.4 in "/usr/perl5/5.8.4/". The patches for this issue only apply to Perl 5.8.4.

3. Symptoms

There are no reliable symptoms that would indicate the described issue has been exploited to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the affected Perl application on a host. The symptoms of the Denial of Service would be the Perl application no longer running.

4. Workaround

To work around the described issue, check for and remove utf-8 characters from the user supplied input. However, exact steps would differ for each perl use case.

Or, use perl 5.6.1 instead, available on Solaris 10. Sites can modify the path to Perl to use Perl 5.6.1 rather than 5.8.4 in their scripts by changing the path to the Perl interpreter from /bin/perl or /usr/bin/perl or /usr/perl5/5.8.4/bin/perl to /usr/perl5/5.6.1/bin/perl.

Additional information can be found at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-1259/fhkna?a=view

5. Resolution

This issue is addressed in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

• Solaris 10 with patch 122239-03 or later

x86 Platform

• Solaris 10 with patch 122240-03 or later

For more information on Security Sun Alerts, see 1009886.1.

This Sun Alert notification is being provided to you on an "AS IS" basis. This Sun Alert notification may contain information provided by third parties. The issues described in this Sun Alert notification may or may not impact your system(s). Sun makes no representations, warranties, or guarantees as to the information contained herein. ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE HEREBY DISCLAIMED. BY ACCESSING THIS DOCUMENT YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT SUN SHALL IN NO EVENT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES THAT ARISE OUT OF YOUR USE OR FAILURE TO USE THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN. This Sun Alert notification contains Sun proprietary and confidential information. It is being provided to you pursuant to the provisions of your agreement to purchase services from Sun, or, if you do not have such an agreement, the Sun.com Terms of Use. This Sun Alert notification may only be used for the purposes contemplated by these agreements.

Copyright 2000-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054 U.S.A. All rights reserved.

Modification History
28-Apr-2008: Updated Resolution section to add link for Security Technical Instruction doc
08-Aug-2008: Updated Contributing Factors and Resolution sections; now Resolved

Product
Solaris 10 Operating System

References

122239-03
122240-03





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