Microsoft Uncovers Flaws in ncurses Library Affecting Linux and macOS Systems

A set of memory corruption flaws have been found out in the ncurses (brief for new curses) programming library that could be exploited by risk actors to run malicious code on vulnerable Linux and macOS programs.

“Working with natural environment variable poisoning, attackers could chain these vulnerabilities to elevate privileges and operate code in the specific program’s context or accomplish other destructive steps,” Microsoft Menace Intelligence scientists Jonathan Bar Or, Emanuele Cozzi, and Michael Pearse claimed in a complex report revealed nowadays.

The vulnerabilities, collectively tracked as CVE-2023-29491 (CVSS rating of 7.8), have been tackled as of April 2023. Microsoft said it also labored with Apple on addressing the macOS-distinct issues relevant to these flaws.

Setting variables are person-defined values that can be made use of by multiple plans on a method and can affect the fashion in which they behave on the program. Manipulating the variables can cause programs to perform if not unauthorized functions.

Microsoft’s code auditing and fuzzing identified that the ncurses library queries for numerous setting variables, like TERMINFO, which could be poisoned and blended with the recognized flaws to obtain privilege escalation. Terminfo is a databases that enables packages to use exhibit terminals in a device-unbiased way.

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The flaws encompass a stack details leak, a parameterized string type confusion, an off-by-one particular error, a heap out-of-bounds through terminfo databases file parsing, and a denial-of-assistance with canceled strings.

“The found vulnerabilities could have been exploited by attackers to elevate privileges and run code inside a targeted program’s context,” the scientists stated. “Nonetheless, attaining regulate of a program as a result of exploiting memory corruption vulnerabilities demands a multi-stage attack.”

“The vulnerabilities might have required to be chained jointly for an attacker to elevate privileges, these types of as exploiting the stack information and facts leak to attain arbitrary read through primitives together with exploiting the heap overflow to get hold of a generate primitive.”

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Some parts of this article are sourced from:
thehackernews.com