CVE-2004-1195 in Star Wars Battlefront
Summary
by MITRE
Star Wars Battlefront 1.11 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) via a join request that contains a memory address that causes the server to read arbitrary memory.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/10/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2004-1195 affects Electronic Arts Star Wars Battlefront version 1.11 and earlier, representing a critical denial of service flaw that can be exploited remotely by malicious actors. This vulnerability specifically targets the game server's handling of join requests, creating a scenario where an attacker can manipulate the server's memory management processes to trigger application crashes. The flaw demonstrates a fundamental lack of input validation and memory safety mechanisms within the game's networking protocol implementation.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs through a carefully crafted join request that contains a memory address designed to force the server into reading arbitrary memory locations. This type of attack falls under the category of memory corruption vulnerabilities, where improper handling of user-supplied data leads to unpredictable behavior in the application. The vulnerability can be classified as a buffer over-read condition or more specifically a memory access violation, as the server attempts to access memory regions it should not be permitted to access. This flaw represents a classic example of insufficient input sanitization and demonstrates how network protocols can be exploited when proper bounds checking is absent.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption, as it can be leveraged by attackers to systematically crash game servers and render them unavailable to legitimate players. This denial of service attack can be executed remotely without requiring authentication or special privileges, making it particularly dangerous for online gaming environments where server stability is crucial for user experience. The vulnerability affects the core functionality of the game's multiplayer infrastructure, potentially leading to widespread service interruption across multiple game sessions and server instances. Such attacks can result in significant downtime, loss of player engagement, and potential reputational damage for the game publisher.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability should focus on implementing robust input validation mechanisms within the game server's networking code, including proper bounds checking of all incoming data and memory address validation. The implementation of proper memory safety practices such as stack canaries, address space layout randomization, and heap integrity checking would significantly reduce the exploitability of this flaw. Additionally, network-level protections such as rate limiting and connection filtering can help prevent abuse of this vulnerability. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-125 (Out-of-bounds Read) and CWE-787 (Out-of-bounds Write) categories, and can be mapped to ATT&CK technique T1499.004 (Endpoint Denial of Service) within the adversary tactics framework. Regular security updates and patches should be implemented to address such memory safety issues, while also conducting thorough code reviews and security testing of network protocols to prevent similar vulnerabilities from being introduced in future versions of the software.