oss-security - CVE request: qemu e1000 emulated device gues-side buffer overflow

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Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 23:52:31 +0400
From: Michael Tokarev <mjt@....msk.ru>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: CVE request: qemu e1000 emulated device gues-side buffer overflow

qemu-1.3 includes the following patch by Michael Contreras:

 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.qemu/182666
  (initial submission)
 http://git.qemu.org/?p=qemu.git;a=commitdiff;h=b0d9ffcd0251161c7c92f94804dcf599dfa3edeb
  (the commit)

commit b0d9ffcd0251161c7c92f94804dcf599dfa3edeb
Author: Michael Contreras <michael@...tric.com>
Date:   Sun Dec 2 20:11:22 2012 -0800
Subject: e1000: Discard packets that are too long if !SBP and !LPE

 The e1000_receive function for the e1000 needs to discard packets longer than
 1522 bytes if the SBP and LPE flags are disabled. The linux driver assumes
 this behavior and allocates memory based on this assumption.

 Signed-off-by: Michael Contreras <michael <at> inetric.com>
 ---

 Tested with linux guest. This error can potentially be exploited. At the very
 least it can cause a DoS to a guest system, and in the worse case it could
 allow remote code execution on the guest system with kernel level privilege.
 Risk seems low, as the network would need to be configured to allow large
 packets.

The last comment, which didn't went into the commit message, indicates
that it is possible to send larger packet to a guest and cause a buffer
overflow with usual outcome in such cases.

Yes indeed, the impact is rather low, because the network should be
configured to allow larger packets to reach the guest, which is not
usually the case -- either the host network is configure for MTU=1500
and disallow large packets entirely, or BOTH host and guest network is
configured to allow large packets.  In other words, either all devices
on the network are configred to accept jumbo frames, no no jumbo frames
are enabled at all.

That's why I'm not sure whenever this can be considered a vulnerability
which deserves a CVE# or not, so I'm asking here.

There's another followup bugfix in the same area, now talking about
"extra-large" frames --

 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.qemu/183137

If this issue deserves a CVE#, I guess both patches can be seen as a
single bugfix.

This impacts qemu and all products based on it and using e1000 emulated
device, including qemu-kvm, xen and others.

Thanks,

/mjt

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