A vulnerability was found in NetHack up to 3.6.4 and classified as critical. This issue affects an unknown part of the component Options Handler. The manipulation of the argument -de/-i as part of a Argument leads to a buffer overflow vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-120. The product copies an input buffer to an output buffer without verifying that the size of the input buffer is less than the size of the output buffer, leading to a buffer overflow. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

In NetHack before 3.6.5, unknown options starting with -de and -i can cause a buffer overflow resulting in a crash or remote code execution/privilege escalation. This vulnerability affects systems that have NetHack installed suid/sgid and shared systems that allow users to influence command line options. Users should upgrade to NetHack 3.6.5.

The weakness was published 01/28/2020 (GitHub Repository). It is possible to read the advisory at github.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2020-5209 since 01/02/2020. Attacking locally is a requirement. A simple authentication is necessary for exploitation. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit.

Upgrading to version 3.6.5 eliminates this vulnerability.

Productinfo

Name

• NetHack

Version

• 3.6.0
• 3.6.1
• 3.6.2
• 3.6.3
• 3.6.4

License

• open-source

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CPE 2.2info

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