FreeBSD VuXML: Documenting security issues in FreeBSD and the FreeBSD Ports Collection

libXfont -- BDF parsing issues

Affected packages
libXfont < 1.5.1
linux-c6-xorg-libs < 7.4_4
linux-f10-xorg-libs < 7.4_4

Details

VuXML ID f7d79fac-cd49-11e4-898f-bcaec565249c
Discovery 2015-03-17
Entry 2015-03-18
Modified 2016-01-31

Alan Coopersmith reports:

Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered an issue in the parsing of BDF font files by libXfont. Additional testing by Alan Coopersmith and William Robinet with the American Fuzzy Lop (afl) tool uncovered two more issues in the parsing of BDF font files.

As libXfont is used by the X server to read font files, and an unprivileged user with access to the X server can tell the X server to read a given font file from a path of their choosing, these vulnerabilities have the potential to allow unprivileged users to run code with the privileges of the X server (often root access).

References

CVE Name CVE-2015-1802
CVE Name CVE-2015-1803
CVE Name CVE-2015-1804
URL http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-announce/2015-March/002550.html