CVE-2008-4572 in GuildFTPd
Summary
by MITRE
GuildFTPd 0.999.14, and possibly other versions, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via long arguments to the CWD and LIST commands, which triggers heap corruption related to an improper free call, and possibly triggering a heap-based buffer overflow.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/25/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2008-4572 affects GuildFTPd version 0.999.14 and potentially other versions, presenting a critical security risk that combines both denial of service and potential remote code execution capabilities. This flaw manifests when remote attackers submit excessively long arguments to the CWD (Change Working Directory) and LIST commands within the FTP protocol implementation. The vulnerability stems from improper memory management practices within the application's handling of user-supplied input, creating conditions that lead to heap corruption through incorrect free calls. The technical nature of this vulnerability places it firmly within the realm of heap-based buffer overflows, which represent a well-documented class of memory corruption vulnerabilities that have been extensively catalogued under CWE-122 and CWE-125 in the Common Weakness Enumeration framework.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption, as it can potentially allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on the affected system. When legitimate users or malicious actors submit overly long arguments to the CWD and LIST commands, the application's memory management routines fail to properly handle the excessive input, leading to heap corruption that can be exploited to overwrite critical memory locations. This memory corruption can manifest as application crashes or more dangerously, provide attackers with opportunities to inject and execute malicious code within the context of the GuildFTPd process. The vulnerability's potential for remote code execution places it in the ATT&CK framework category of privilege escalation and execution, specifically under techniques that involve memory corruption exploits.
The underlying flaw represents a classic improper free call vulnerability where the application fails to properly validate or sanitize input parameters before processing them through memory allocation and deallocation routines. This creates a scenario where heap-based buffer overflows can occur when the application attempts to free memory that has already been corrupted or when memory management operations are performed on invalid memory pointers. The vulnerability's exploitation requires minimal privileges and can be executed remotely, making it particularly dangerous in networked environments where FTP services are exposed to untrusted networks. Organizations should consider this vulnerability as part of their broader threat landscape, particularly when assessing their FTP server implementations against known attack patterns documented in the MITRE ATT&CK framework. The remediation approach should focus on input validation, proper memory management practices, and application-level protections against malformed input sequences that could trigger heap corruption conditions.
Security professionals should implement immediate mitigations including input length restrictions for FTP commands, application firewalls, and network segmentation to limit exposure. The vulnerability demonstrates the critical importance of proper memory management in server applications and highlights the need for regular security assessments of legacy FTP implementations. Organizations running GuildFTPd or similar FTP servers should prioritize patching or implementing compensating controls to prevent exploitation of this vulnerability. The technical characteristics of the flaw align with industry best practices for secure coding, particularly regarding heap management and input validation, which are fundamental requirements in secure software development lifecycle processes.