CVE-2008-3447 in F-Prot Antivirus
Summary
by MITRE
The scanning engine in F-Prot Antivirus 6.2.1 4252 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) via a malformed ZIP archive, probably related to invalid offsets.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/02/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2008-3447 resides within the scanning engine of F-Prot Antivirus version 6.2.1 build 4252, representing a critical denial of service weakness that can be exploited remotely by malicious actors. This flaw specifically manifests when the antivirus software processes malformed ZIP archive files, creating a condition where the scanning engine enters an infinite loop that consumes excessive system resources and ultimately renders the antivirus protection ineffective. The vulnerability's remote exploitation capability makes it particularly dangerous as attackers can trigger the denial of service condition without requiring physical access to the target system, potentially disrupting business operations and security infrastructure.
The technical root cause of this vulnerability stems from inadequate input validation within the ZIP archive parsing functionality of F-Prot's scanning engine. When encountering a malformed ZIP file containing invalid offset values, the engine fails to properly handle the error condition and instead falls into a recursive or iterative processing loop that never terminates. This behavior aligns with CWE-835, which categorizes infinite loops as a common weakness in software that can lead to resource exhaustion and system instability. The improper handling of malformed data structures during archive extraction represents a classic example of insufficient error handling and boundary condition validation within security software components.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption, as it directly undermines the fundamental security posture of systems running the affected F-Prot version. Organizations relying on this antivirus solution may experience complete loss of protection during the denial of service attack, leaving their networks exposed to other threats while the system resources are consumed by the infinite loop. The vulnerability affects the availability aspect of the security infrastructure, potentially enabling attackers to perform persistent disruption attacks against critical systems. This weakness can be particularly devastating in enterprise environments where antivirus solutions are deployed across numerous endpoints, as a single compromised system could trigger cascading failures throughout the network infrastructure.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2008-3447 should prioritize immediate patching of the affected F-Prot antivirus software to version 6.2.1 build 4253 or later, which contains the necessary fixes for the ZIP archive parsing logic. Security administrators should also implement network-level monitoring to detect unusual resource consumption patterns that may indicate exploitation attempts, and consider deploying additional layers of security controls such as network segmentation and intrusion detection systems. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of robust input validation in security software, as highlighted by ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for network denial of service attacks. Organizations should also conduct regular vulnerability assessments of their security tooling to identify similar weaknesses in other antivirus and security solutions that may present similar attack vectors through malformed file processing.