Microsoft Windows kernel contains stack overflow

Overview

A stack overflow vulnerability exists in the Microsoft Windows kernel.

Description

The kernel is the core or “heart” of any operating system and is responsible for a variety of things, such as managing memory and allocating hardware resources. Entercept’s Ricochet Team has discovered a stack buffer overflow in the Microsoft Windows kernel (ntoskrnl.exe). This vulnerability is present in Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

The overflow exists in the portion of the kernel responsible for handling debugging. Specifically, LpcRequestWaitReplyPort(), which is called from the kernel, inappropriately trusts a user space process to correctly report the size of a message passed back to the kernel. By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker may be able to execute code with the privileges of the operating system kernel. For further technical details, please see the following documents:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-013
Entercept Security Alert

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Impact

Exploitation of this vulnerability may allow an attacker to execute code in the context of the kernel. As a result, an attacker could do anything the kernel is capable of doing, such as reading protected areas of system memory, writing to disk, and communicating with the network.

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Solution

Apply a patch when one becomes available.

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Vendor Information

446338

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Updated: April 16, 2003

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

<http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-013.asp&gt;

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

The CERT/CC has no additional comments at this time.

If you have feedback, comments, or additional information about this vulnerability, please send us [email](<mailto:[email protected]?Subject=VU%23446338 Feedback>).

CVSS Metrics

Group	Score	Vector
Base
Temporal
Environmental

References

• <http://www.entercept.com/news/uspr/04-16-03.asp&gt;
• <http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-013.asp&gt;

Acknowledgements

This vulnerability was discovered by Oded Horovitz of Entercept Security Technologies. The CERT/CC thanks both Entercept Security Technologies and Microsoft for providing information that served as a basis for this document.

This document was written by Ian A Finlay.

Other Information

CVE IDs:	CVE-2003-0112
Severity Metric:	10.13 Date Public: