neon heap-based buffer overflow — GLSA 200405-13

A vulnerability potentially allowing remote execution of arbitrary code has been discovered in the neon library.

Affected packages

Package 	net-misc/neon on all architectures
Affected versions 	<= 0.24.5
Unaffected versions 	>= 0.24.6

Background

neon provides an HTTP and WebDAV client library.

Description

Stefan Esser discovered a vulnerability in the code of the neon library : if a malicious date string is passed to the ne_rfc1036_parse() function, it can trigger a string overflow into static heap variables.

Impact

Depending on the application linked against libneon and when connected to a malicious WebDAV server, this vulnerability could allow execution of arbitrary code with the rights of the user running that application.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time. All users are advised to upgrade to the latest available version of neon.

Resolution

All users of neon should upgrade to the latest stable version:

 # emerge sync

 # emerge -pv ">=net-misc/neon-0.24.6"
 # emerge ">=net-misc/neon-0.24.6"

References

    E-matters advisory 06/2004
    CAN-2004-0398