A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in GNU less 358/381/382. Affected by this issue is the function open_altfile of the file filename.c. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a memory corruption vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-119. The product performs operations on a memory buffer, but it can read from or write to a memory location that is outside of the intended boundary of the buffer. Impacted is integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

** DISPUTED ** Format string bug in the open_altfile function in filename.c for GNU less 382, 381, and 358 might allow local users to cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code via format strings in the LESSOPEN environment variable. NOTE: since less is not setuid or setgid, then this is not a vulnerability unless there are plausible scenarios under which privilege boundaries could be crossed.

The weakness was presented 08/18/2004 by Serkan Akpolat (Website). The advisory is shared for download at archives.neohapsis.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2004-2264 since 07/19/2005. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available.

The real existence of this vulnerability is still doubted at the moment.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at X-Force (17032).

Productinfo

Vendor

• GNU

Name

• less

Version

• 358
• 381
• 382

License

• open-source

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