CVE-2002-0404 in Ethereal
Summary
by MITRE
Vulnerability in GIOP dissector in Ethereal before 0.9.3 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption).
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/28/2018
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2002-0404 represents a critical denial of service flaw within the GIOP dissector component of Ethereal network protocol analyzer version 0.9.2 and earlier. This vulnerability specifically targets the General Inter-ORB Protocol dissector which is responsible for parsing and analyzing CORBA communication traffic. The issue arises from insufficient input validation and memory management within the dissector's handling of malformed GIOP packets, creating a scenario where remote attackers can exploit this weakness to consume excessive system resources.
The technical flaw manifests when the GIOP dissector processes specially crafted malformed packets that contain oversized or malformed data structures. These malformed packets trigger a memory allocation loop within the dissector code where the application continuously allocates memory without proper bounds checking or resource cleanup mechanisms. The vulnerability operates at the protocol analysis layer of the network monitoring tool, where Ethereal processes captured network traffic to provide detailed packet information to analysts. When an attacker sends malicious GIOP packets to a system running the vulnerable Ethereal version, the dissector enters an unbounded memory allocation cycle that progressively consumes available system memory until the system becomes unresponsive or crashes entirely.
This vulnerability has significant operational impact on network monitoring and security operations. Organizations relying on Ethereal for network traffic analysis and security monitoring face potential service disruption when attackers exploit this weakness. The denial of service condition affects not only the availability of the monitoring tool itself but can also impact the broader network infrastructure as the system may become unresponsive or crash completely. The vulnerability is particularly concerning because it can be exploited remotely without requiring authentication, making it a low-barrier attack vector that can be easily automated. From an attacker's perspective, this vulnerability aligns with the ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for network denial of service, and the CWE classification of CWE-129 represents improper validation of the length of a field, which directly relates to the memory consumption issue.
The attack surface for this vulnerability extends to any system running Ethereal 0.9.2 or earlier versions and actively monitoring networks where CORBA traffic may be present. Network administrators and security professionals who deploy Ethereal for monitoring distributed applications, enterprise networks, or systems utilizing CORBA services are particularly at risk. The vulnerability's exploitability is further enhanced by the widespread use of CORBA-based applications in enterprise environments, making the impact more significant than initially apparent. Organizations should note that this vulnerability also relates to the broader category of memory safety issues that are frequently targeted in modern exploit development, and it serves as an early example of how protocol parsing flaws can lead to resource exhaustion attacks.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2002-0404 require immediate action to upgrade to Ethereal version 0.9.3 or later, which contains the necessary patches to address the memory handling issues in the GIOP dissector. System administrators should also implement network segmentation and access controls to limit exposure of systems running Ethereal to untrusted networks. Additional defensive measures include implementing network monitoring to detect unusual memory consumption patterns and establishing incident response procedures for handling potential exploitation attempts. The vulnerability highlights the importance of proper input validation and resource management in protocol analysis tools, and organizations should review their network monitoring infrastructure for similar memory safety issues. This vulnerability also underscores the necessity of regular security updates and the importance of maintaining current versions of network security tools to protect against known exploits. The remediation process should also include thorough testing of updated versions to ensure that the patch does not introduce compatibility issues with existing network monitoring workflows.