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Re: Buffer overflow/privilege escalation in MacOS X



Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 11:54:02 -0800
From: Max <rusmir@xxxxxxxx>
To: bugtraq@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Buffer overflow/privilege escalation in MacOS X

Hi,

It appears that parts of MacOSX that didn't come from BSD are
not very well written and have significant security issues.

An example is a /System/Library/Filesystems/cd9660.fs/cd9660.util
utility. It is suid root and it is vulnerable to a classic buffer
overflow due to the lack of input validation.


Indeed. However, due to several mitigating factors, this issue doe not appear to be exploitable (at least not with any of the techniques I am aware of). The overflow occurs in main() and there is an unavoidable exit() at the end of the function. So while you can overwrite the return stack frame, the process will never use your new value.

Cheers,

Dave G.