A critical Buffer overflow vulnerability, which allowed remote users to access Linux and gain root-level privileges, was discovered in pppD (Point to Point Protocol Daemon).
pppD (Point to Point Daemon), is often used to manage network connections in Unix-based operating systems and is also used to manage broadband connections such as DSL, if PPPoE or PPPoA is used.
A researcher discovered this critical vulnerability located in the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) packet processor in the Point-to-Point Protocol Daemon (pppd).
A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause a buffer overflow, which could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on the target system.
The vulnerability, discovered by Ilja Van Sprundel and called CVE-2020-8597, is rated 9.3 CVE. GBHackers has not found any currently exploited code for this vulnerability.
The following are the Linux distributions in which this vulnerability has been confirmed to be present, running with pppd (Point to Point Daemon) versions 2.4.2 to 2.4.8.
Debian GNU/Linux
Fedora Project
Red Hat
SUSE Linux
Ubuntu
An updated version is also being released to the following vendors,
Cisco
NetBSD
OpenWRT
Synology
TP-LINK
The buffer overflow vulnerability affected several Linux due to a bug that invalidates the input size before copying the supplied data into memory.
During input size validation, if the data size validation is incorrect, it leads to Copying arbitrary data to memory and causes memory corruption which in turn allows attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code.
Since the data is unverified and the size is unknown, the vulnerability corrupts the system .
Also, PPP runs with elevated privileges and works in conjunction with driver , which allows attackers to gain root-.
