CVE-2006-4330 in Wireshark
Summary
by MITRE
Unspecified vulnerability in the SCSI dissector in Wireshark (formerly Ethereal) 0.99.2 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via unspecified vectors.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/13/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2006-4330 represents a critical denial of service flaw within Wireshark's SCSI dissector component. This issue affects Wireshark version 0.99.2 and earlier releases, where the software's ability to analyze SCSI protocol traffic becomes compromised through unspecified attack vectors. The SCSI dissector serves as a crucial parsing module responsible for interpreting SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) protocol data within network captures, making it a potential target for malicious exploitation. The vulnerability manifests when the application processes specially crafted or malformed SCSI protocol data, leading to application instability and subsequent crash conditions that disrupt normal network analysis operations.
The technical nature of this vulnerability falls under the category of buffer overflows or memory corruption issues within the protocol dissector implementation. When Wireshark encounters malformed SCSI packets during packet analysis, the dissector fails to properly validate input data, resulting in memory access violations or stack corruption. This type of flaw typically stems from inadequate bounds checking or improper handling of variable-length data structures within the SCSI protocol parsing logic. The vulnerability's unspecified nature suggests that multiple attack vectors may exist, potentially including malformed SCSI command blocks, incorrect data length fields, or corrupted SCSI packet headers that cause the dissector to execute invalid memory operations. Such issues directly relate to CWE-121, which covers stack-based buffer overflow conditions, and CWE-125, addressing out-of-bounds read vulnerabilities.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple application crashes, as it can severely disrupt network forensic analysis operations and incident response activities. Network security analysts relying on Wireshark for protocol analysis may find their investigation tools become unavailable when processing traffic containing maliciously crafted SCSI packets. This vulnerability particularly affects environments where SCSI protocol traffic is common, such as storage area networks, enterprise data centers, or systems utilizing SCSI-based storage interfaces. The remote nature of the attack means that an adversary could potentially exploit this vulnerability without requiring local access to the target system, making it especially dangerous in network monitoring and security analysis contexts. Organizations using Wireshark for continuous network monitoring or security auditing would face significant operational disruption if this vulnerability were exploited in their network traffic analysis workflows.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2006-4330 primarily involve immediate software updates to patched versions of Wireshark, specifically versions 0.99.3 and later which contain fixes for the SCSI dissector vulnerability. System administrators should prioritize patch management activities to ensure all instances of Wireshark are updated to secure versions. Network security teams may also implement additional monitoring and filtering measures to identify and isolate potentially malicious SCSI protocol traffic. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this vulnerability under T1499.004, which covers network denial of service attacks, and T1595.001 for reconnaissance techniques involving protocol analysis tool exploitation. Organizations should also consider implementing network segmentation and access controls to limit exposure of systems running Wireshark to potentially malicious traffic sources. Regular security assessments and vulnerability scanning should include verification of Wireshark versions to prevent exploitation of known vulnerabilities in protocol analysis tools. The remediation process should also include comprehensive testing of patched software to ensure that the fix properly resolves the SCSI dissector crash conditions while maintaining full protocol analysis functionality.