Gaim: Denial of Service and buffer overflow vulnerabilties

Background

Gaim is a full featured instant messaging client which handles a variety of instant messaging protocols.

Description

Stu Tomlinson discovered that Gaim is vulnerable to a remote stack based buffer overflow when receiving messages in certain protocols, like Jabber and SILC, with a very long URL (CAN-2005-1261). Siebe Tolsma discovered that Gaim is also vulnerable to a remote Denial of Service attack when receiving a specially crafted MSN message (CAN-2005-1262).

Impact

A remote attacker could cause a buffer overflow by sending an instant message with a very long URL, potentially leading to the execution of malicious code. By sending a SLP message with an empty body, a remote attacker could cause a Denial of Service or crash of the Gaim client.

Workaround

There are no known workarounds at this time.

Resolution

All Gaim users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-im/gaim-1.3.0"