CVE-2018-17042

Vulnerability

An infinite loop vulnerability exists in dbf2txt through 2012-07-19. The bug is triggered when the tool parses a specially crafted .dbf file; the program enters a loop that never terminates, leading to a denial of service. No authentication or special privileges are required to trigger the issue, as the tool processes the file when executed with a command like ./dbf2txt infinite_loop.dbf 1.txt [1][2].

Exploitation

An attacker can exploit the vulnerability by providing a malicious .dbf file to the dbf2txt utility. The attacker does not need any network access or authentication; the only requirement is that the victim processes the malformed file using dbf2txt. The vulnerability is reachable simply by running the tool on the crafted input; the infinite loop occurs during file parsing [1][2].

Impact

Successful exploitation causes an infinite loop, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) as the tool hangs indefinitely, consuming CPU resources. No code execution, information disclosure, or file write is possible; the impact is limited to availability [1][2].

Mitigation

As of the publication date (2018-09-14), no official fix has been released for dbf2txt. The project appears to be abandoned (last activity in 2012). Users should avoid processing untrusted .dbf files with the tool. No workaround is available. The vulnerability is not listed in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.