Check Point Advisories

GNU Tar PAX Extended Headers Handling Buffer Overflow (CVE-2006-0300)

Vulnerability
Protection

Check Point Reference:	CPAI-2006-161
Date Published:	11 Oct 2009
Severity:	Medium
Last Updated:	Sunday 11 October, 2009
Source:
Industry Reference:	CVE-2006-0300
Protection Provided by:	Security Gateway R81, R80, R77, R75
Who is Vulnerable?
Vulnerability Description	The GNU tar program provides the ability to create and extract TAR archives along with various other kinds of manipulations. The program was initially designed to store files on magnetic tape, but has since then become a widely used archiving utility. A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the GNU Tar archive utility. The flaw is specific to processing PAX archives which contain extended headers. An attacker may leverage this vulnerability to cause a vulnerable version of the affected program to terminate by enticing a user to download and process a malicious archive file. Upon processing of a malicious archive, the affected Tar utility will terminate. Error messages may be generated on the process termination. The system as a whole is not affected as a result of such an attack.

Protection Overview

This protection will detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability

In order for the protection to be activated, update your Security Gateway product to the latest IPS update. For information on how to update IPS, go to SBP-2006-05, click on Protection tab and select the version of your choice.

Security Gateway R80 / R77 / R75

In the IPS tab, click Protections and find the GNU Tar PAX Extended Headers Handling Buffer Overflow protection using the Search tool and Edit the protection's settings.
Install policy on all Security Gateways.

This protection's log will contain the following information:

Attack Name: Content Protection Violation.
Attack Information: GNU Tar PAX extended headers handling buffer overflow