TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Sun Microsystems Directory Server Enterprise DSML UTF-8 Denial of Service Vulnerability

ZDI-10-075: April 13th, 2010

CVE ID

CVSS Score

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

    Directory Server

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 9610. For further product information on the TippingPoint IPS:

Vulnerability Details

This vulnerability allows attackers to deny services on vulnerable installations of Sun Microsystems Directory Server. Authentication is not required to exploit this vulnerability.

The specific flaw exists within Sun Directory Server's DSML-over-HTTP implementation and can be triggered via an HTTP POST request to the webserver that the application has bound to. When the service processes an XML request containing specific UTF-8 characters, an underlying library will raise an exception that is uncaught by the application. Due to the exception being uncaught, the application will then terminate which will cause future requests made against the service to fail. This will lead to a denial of service against the affected application.

Vendor Response

Sun Microsystems states:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/critical-patch-updates/cpuapr2010.html


Disclosure Timeline

    2009-10-27 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2010-04-13 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Anonymous