CVE-2018-11740 in The Sleuth Kit
Summary
by MITRE
An issue was discovered in libtskbase.a in The Sleuth Kit (TSK) from release 4.0.2 through to 4.6.1. An out-of-bounds read of a memory region was found in the function tsk_UTF16toUTF8 in tsk/base/tsk_unicode.c which could be leveraged by an attacker to disclose information or manipulated to read from unmapped memory causing a denial of service attack.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 03/21/2023
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-11740 resides within The Sleuth Kit's libtskbase.a library, specifically in the tsk_UTF16toUTF8 function located in tsk/base/tsk_unicode.c. This issue affects versions 4.0.2 through 4.6.1 of the software, representing a critical memory safety flaw that can be exploited by adversaries to gain unauthorized access to system information or cause system instability. The vulnerability manifests as an out-of-bounds read condition that occurs during Unicode string conversion operations, which are fundamental to forensic analysis and data processing within the toolset.
The technical flaw stems from inadequate bounds checking within the UTF-16 to UTF-8 conversion routine, where the function fails to properly validate input data lengths before attempting memory access operations. This allows attackers to craft malicious input sequences that cause the program to read memory locations beyond the allocated buffer boundaries. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-125 as an out-of-bounds read, which represents a common class of memory corruption vulnerabilities that can lead to information disclosure or system crashes. When exploited, this flaw can result in reading sensitive data from adjacent memory locations or attempting to access unmapped memory regions, leading to segmentation faults and potential denial of service conditions.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends significantly within forensic and digital investigation environments where The Sleuth Kit is extensively deployed for analyzing disk images and recovering deleted data. Attackers could potentially leverage this weakness by providing malformed Unicode data to the tool during processing, causing the forensic analysis software to crash or reveal confidential information stored in memory. This represents a serious concern for security professionals who rely on TSK for evidence analysis, as the vulnerability could be exploited to compromise the integrity of forensic investigations or to gain unauthorized access to sensitive system information. The denial of service aspect particularly impacts automated forensic processing pipelines where system availability is critical for timely incident response and digital forensics operations.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2018-11740 should prioritize immediate software updates to versions beyond 4.6.1 where the vulnerability has been patched. Organizations should implement input validation measures to sanitize all Unicode data before processing through the affected functions, though this approach is less reliable than patching the core vulnerability. Security teams should also consider implementing monitoring and intrusion detection systems to identify potential exploitation attempts targeting this specific flaw. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this vulnerability under T1059.007 for system commands and T1070.004 for indicator removal, as attackers might attempt to use this flaw to establish persistent access or hide their activities during forensic analysis. Additionally, organizations should conduct thorough vulnerability assessments to identify any custom implementations or integrations that might be affected by similar memory safety issues within their forensic toolchains.