Security Vulnerability in the OSCAR Protocol Plugin for pidgin(1) may Lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) Condition

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Security vulnerability in the OSCAR protocol plugin for pidgin(1):

1. Impact

A  security vulnerability in the the OSCAR protocol plugin library, the shared library that adds support for various instant messaging networks to the pidgin(1) Instant Messaging client (previously known as Gaim), may allow remote unprivileged users to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) through an application crash via crafted contact-list data for (1) ICQ and possibly (2) AIM.

This issue is also referenced in the following document:

CVE-2009-3615 at: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2009-3615

2. Contributing Factors

This issue can occur in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

• Solaris 10 without patch 143317-01
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_01 through snv_126

x86 Platform

• Solaris 10 without patch 143318-01
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_01 through snv_126
  

Note 1: Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 do not ship Pidgin and therefore are not affected by this issue.

Note 2: This issue only affects systems that have affected versions of either the Pidgin IM client installed or the Gaim IM client installed.

To determine if either of these are installed, run the following commands:

    $ /usr/bin/pidgin -v || echo "Pidgin IM client not installed"

    $ /usr/bin/gaim -v || echo "Gaim IM client not installed"

All versions of Pidgin before 2.6.3, and all versions of Gaim after 0.78 are impacted by this issue.

The conversion from Gaim to Pidgin occurred in build snv_68 of OpenSolaris and in Solaris 10 patches 119548-11 (for SPARC) and 119549-11 (for x86).

Note 3:  OpenSolaris distributions may include additional bug fixes above and beyond the build from which it was derived.

To determine the base build of  OpenSolaris, the following command can be used:

    $ uname -v
    snv_86

3. Symptoms

If the described issue has been exploited to cause a Denial of Service (DoS), Pidgin will crash, potentially leaving a core file depending on the system configuration. There are no predictable symptoms that would indicate that this issue has been exploited to execute arbitrary code.

4. Workaround

To work around this issue until the resolution patches can be applied, do not import contact lists from untrusted sources.

5. Resolution

This issue is addressed in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

• Solaris 10 with patch 143317-01or later
  
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_127 or later

x86 Platform

• Solaris 10 with patch 143318-01or later
• OpenSolaris based upon builds snv_127 or later

For more information on Security Sun Alerts, see Technical Instruction ID 213557.

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Modification History

11-Jan-2009: Updated Contributing Factors and Resolution sections. Resolved.

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