CVE-2022-38495

Vulnerability

Description

CVE-2022-38495 describes a heap-buffer overflow vulnerability in LIEF, a cross-platform library for parsing and manipulating executable file formats. The flaw resides in the print_binary function within /c/macho_reader.c, specifically located at line 39. The issue was discovered in commit 365a16a and is triggered when processing a specially crafted Mach-O file. The root cause involves insufficient bounds checking on load command data, potentially leading to an out-of-bounds read [1][2].

Exploitation

Scenario

An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by providing a malicious Mach-O file to LIEF's tools or API. The proof-of-concept provided in the issue report [2] shows that parsing a crafted poc file with the macho_reader example triggers the overflow. No authentication is required, and the attack surface is any application using LIEF to parse untrusted Mach-O binaries. The overflow is a read of size 1 one byte past a heap-allocated region, as shown in the AddressSanitizer output [2].

Impact

The heap-buffer overflow can cause a denial of service by crashing the application (as observed in the ASAN report) and potentially enabling arbitrary code execution if exploited further. The vulnerable code reads memory beyond an allocated buffer, which could leak sensitive information or be leveraged for more severe attacks, depending on memory layout and mitigations [2][3].

Mitigation

Status

The LIEF project has addressed this vulnerability in commit 0033b6312fd311b2e45e379c04a83d77c1e58578 [4]. The fix includes multiple changes: proper handling of fat->size() before use, resetting load_command->size_ to 0 when reading raw data fails, and adding size checks in ThreadCommand::pc() to prevent out-of-bounds access. Users are advised to update to a version containing this fix. There is no evidence that this CVE is listed in the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog [3].