CVE-2005-1457 in Ethereal
Summary
by MITRE
Multiple unknown vulnerabilities in the (1) AIM, (2) LDAP, (3) FibreChannel, (4) GSM_MAP, (5) SRVLOC, and (6) NTLMSSP dissectors in Ethereal before 0.10.11 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash).
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/29/2024
The vulnerability described in CVE-2005-1457 represents a critical denial of service weakness affecting multiple protocol dissectors within the Ethereal network analysis tool prior to version 0.10.11. This issue impacts six distinct protocol dissectors including AIM, LDAP, FibreChannel, GSM_MAP, SRVLOC, and NTLMSSP, all of which are essential components for analyzing various network protocols. The vulnerability stems from inadequate input validation and error handling mechanisms within these dissectors, creating exploitable conditions that can be triggered by malformed or malicious network packets.
The technical flaw manifests through buffer overflows and improper memory management within the dissectors that process network traffic for the affected protocols. When Ethereal encounters specially crafted packets designed to exploit these weaknesses, the dissectors fail to properly handle the malformed data structures, leading to program crashes and system instability. This type of vulnerability falls under CWE-121, which encompasses buffer overflow conditions, and specifically relates to CWE-125, which addresses out-of-bounds read errors. The root cause lies in the absence of proper bounds checking and input sanitization within the protocol parsing routines, allowing attackers to craft packets that exceed expected data boundaries.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption, as it can be exploited by remote attackers to cause complete system crashes without requiring any authentication or privileged access. Network administrators and security professionals who rely on Ethereal for network monitoring and analysis face significant risk, as an attacker could potentially bring down network analysis systems during critical security events or incident response activities. This vulnerability directly maps to ATT&CK technique T1498, which involves network denial of service attacks, and represents a classic example of how protocol parsing vulnerabilities can be leveraged to achieve system compromise. The distributed nature of network analysis tools makes this particularly dangerous in enterprise environments where such tools are used for continuous monitoring and security assessment.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2005-1457 require immediate patching of Ethereal installations to version 0.10.11 or later, which includes fixed dissectors with proper input validation and error handling mechanisms. Organizations should also implement network segmentation and access controls to limit exposure of vulnerable systems to untrusted network traffic. Additional protective measures include deploying network intrusion detection systems that can identify and block suspicious packet patterns associated with this vulnerability, as well as maintaining comprehensive network monitoring to detect potential exploitation attempts. Regular security assessments and vulnerability scanning should be conducted to identify other potentially affected components within the network infrastructure, while incident response procedures should be updated to address potential denial of service scenarios involving network analysis tools. The vulnerability highlights the importance of robust input validation in network protocol analysis tools and demonstrates how seemingly minor parsing issues can result in significant system instability and service disruption.