FreeBSD VuXML: Documenting security issues in FreeBSD and the FreeBSD Ports Collection

nss -- exploitable buffer overflow in SSLv2 protocol handler

Affected packages
nss < 3.9.2

Details

VuXML ID 207f8ff3-f697-11d8-81b0-000347a4fa7d
Discovery 2004-08-23
Entry 2004-08-27

ISS X-Force reports that a remotely exploitable buffer overflow exists in the Netscape Security Services (NSS) library's implementation of SSLv2. From their advisory:

The NSS library contains a flaw in SSLv2 record parsing that may lead to remote compromise. When parsing the first record in an SSLv2 negotiation, the client hello message, the server fails to validate the length of a record field. As a result, it is possible for an attacker to trigger a heap-based overflow of arbitrary length.

Note that the vulnerable NSS library is also present in Mozilla-based browsers. However, it is not believed that browsers are affected, as the vulnerability is present only in code used by SSLv2 *servers*.

References

Bugtraq ID 11015
URL http://secunia.com/advisories/12362
URL http://www.osvdb.org/9116
URL http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/alerts/id/180