Vulnerability Monitor

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CVE-2019-17042


An issue was discovered in Rsyslog v8.1908.0. contrib/pmcisconames/pmcisconames.c has a heap overflow in the parser for Cisco log messages. The parser tries to locate a log message delimiter (in this case, a space or a colon), but fails to account for strings that do not satisfy this constraint. If the string does not match, then the variable lenMsg will reach the value zero and will skip the sanity check that detects invalid log messages. The message will then be considered valid, and the parser will eat up the nonexistent colon delimiter. In doing so, it will decrement lenMsg, a signed integer, whose value was zero and now becomes minus one. The following step in the parser is to shift left the contents of the message. To do this, it will call memmove with the right pointers to the target and destination strings, but the lenMsg will now be interpreted as a huge value, causing a heap overflow.


Security Impact Summary

This vulnerability carries a CRITICAL severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 9.8, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network with relatively low complexity without requiring user interaction and does not require pre-existing privileges . The vulnerability impacts confidentiality (data exposure), integrity (unauthorized modifications), and availability (service disruption) for affected systems. Impacting 4 products from rsyslog, from fedoraproject, from debian and 1 other, organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.

Historical Context

First disclosed in 2019, this vulnerability was reported during a period defined by widespread IoT adoption challenges, mobile security concerns, and the emergence of advanced persistent threat (APT) techniques. Contemporary mitigation strategies focused on secure development practices and third-party component vetting.


Published

2019-10-07T16:15:11.647

Last Modified

2024-11-21T04:31:35.040

Status

Modified

Source

[email protected]

Severity

CVSSv3.1: 9.8 (CRITICAL)

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

  • Access Vector: NETWORK
  • Access Complexity: LOW
  • Authentication: NONE
  • Confidentiality Impact: PARTIAL
  • Integrity Impact: PARTIAL
  • Availability Impact: PARTIAL
Exploitability Score

10.0

Impact Score

6.4

Weaknesses
  • Type: Primary
    CWE-20

Affected Vendors & Products
Type Vendor Product Version/Range Vulnerable?
Application rsyslog rsyslog 8.1908.0 Yes
Operating System fedoraproject fedora 30 Yes
Operating System fedoraproject fedora 31 Yes
Operating System debian debian_linux 9.0 Yes
Operating System opensuse leap 15.0 Yes
Operating System opensuse leap 15.1 Yes

References

How SecUtils Interprets This CVE

SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For rsyslog's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.