[Secure-testing-team] Bug#865607: gdb: CVE-2017-9778: Fail to detect invalid FDE header, can exhaust gdb process's virtual memory and terminate debug session

[Salvatore Bonaccorso]

Source: gdb
Version: 7.7.1+dfsg-1
Severity: normal
Tags: security upstream
Forwarded: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21600

Hi,

the following vulnerability was published for gdb, filling a bug to
track the issue and the fix status.

CVE-2017-9778[0]:
| GNU Debugger (GDB) 8.0 and earlier fails to detect a negative length
| field in a DWARF section. A malformed section in an ELF binary or a
| core file can cause GDB to repeatedly allocate memory until a process
| limit is reached. This can, for example, impede efforts to analyze
| malware with GDB.

If you fix the vulnerability please also make sure to include the
CVE (Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures) id in your changelog entry.

For further information see:

[0] https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2017-9778
    https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-9778

Regards,
Salvatore