CVE-2011-3965

CVE: CVE-2011-3965
CWE:
- 347
- 476
bugs:
- 109664
repo: 
vccs:
- note: an attempt to speed up the certificate extraction
  commit: 453bd5e766fc0a01fe24c7d870816925d79fb26f
fixes:
- note: fixed null pointer dereference
  commit: 7352baf29ac44d23cd580c2edfa8faf4e140a480
bounty:
  date: 
  amount: 
  references: []
lessons:
  yagni:
    note: 
    applies: 
  question: |
    Are there any common lessons we have learned from class that apply to this
    vulnerability? In other words, could this vulnerability serve as an example
    of one of those lessons?

    Leave "applies" blank or put false if you did not see that lesson (you do
    not need to put a reason). Put "true" if you feel the lesson applies and put
    a quick explanation of how it applies.

    Don't feel the need to claim that ALL of these apply, but it's pretty likely
    that one or two of them apply.

    If you think of another lesson we covered in class that applies here, feel
    free to give it a small name and add one in the same format as these.
  serial_killer:
    note: 
    applies: 
  complex_inputs:
    note: 
    applies: 
  distrust_input:
    note: |
      Checking and ensuring that the data that comes from outside the system
      is valid before manipulating it could go a long way.
    applies: true
  least_privilege:
    note: 
    applies: 
  native_wrappers:
    note: 
    applies: 
  defense_in_depth:
    note: 
    applies: 
  secure_by_default:
    note: 
    applies: 
  environment_variables:
    note: 
    applies: 
  security_by_obscurity:
    note: 
    applies: 
  frameworks_are_optional:
    note: 
    applies: 
reviews:
- 9283039
- 9150013
upvotes: 
mistakes:
  answer: |
    NULL Pointer Dereference is one of the commonly seen vulnerabilities.
    It is very important to validate data received from outside the module
    before acting upon it. Sanity-checking before using could nearly prevent all
    NULL pointer dereference problems. However, it is impossible to sanity-check
    all data all the times. Thus, writing some strong unit tests to check such
    scenarios whenever possible could go a long way.
  question: |
    In your opinion, after all of this research, what mistakes were made that
    led to this vulnerability? Coding mistakes? Design mistakes?
    Maintainability? Requirements? Miscommunications?

    Look at the CWE entry for this vulnerability and examine the mitigations
    they have written there. Are they doing those? Does the fix look proper?

    Use those questions to inspire your answer. Don't feel obligated to answer
    every one. Write a thoughtful entry here that those ing the software
    engineering industry would find interesting.
announced: '2012-02-08 23:10:28.973000000 -05:00'
subsystem:
  name: safebrowsing
  answer: |
    Based on the file structure and the components field on the Bug Report,
    this happened under UI -> Browser -> SafeBrowsing.
    safe_browsing contains many smaller components such as store, parser, utils, observers, database, filter, etc.
  question: |
    What subsystems was the mistake in?

    Look at the path of the source code files code that were fixed to get
    directory names. Look at comments in the code. Look at the bug reports how
    the bug report was tagged. Examples: "clipboard", "gpu", "ssl", "speech", "renderer"
discovered:
  date: '2012-01-09'
  answer: |
    Someone tried the beta version of the chrome on windows, and their browser crashed.
    Then, that person tried on stable version and it didn't crash.
    So, that person looked into crash1.msi and crash1.orig.ms1 files and learned
    that it was a null pointer problem and reported it.
  google: false
  contest: false
  question: |
    How was this vulnerability discovered?

    Go to the bug report and read the conversation to find out how this was
    originally found. Answer in longform below in "answer", fill in the date in
    YYYY-MM-DD, and then determine if the vulnerability was found by a Google
    employee (you can tell from their email address). If it's clear that the
    vulenrability was discovered by a contest, fill in the name there.

    The "automated" flag can be true, false, or nil.
    The "google" flag can be true, false, or nil.

    If there is no evidence as to how this vulnerability was found, then you may
    leave the entries blank except for "answer". Write down where you looked in "answer".
  automated: 
description: |
  Google Chrome crashed when the program internally called a function.
  This function tries to access data from a NULL variable. This allows remote attackers
  to cause a denial of service (application crash).

  In general, this is a NULL Pointer Deference problem, that can occur when the
  application deferences a pointer expecting it to be a valid, but is NULL.
  This causes a program to crash or exit.
unit_tested:
  fix: false
  code: true
  answer: |
    The original code was tested using three unit tests based on the expected
    output of the function, which in this case is either true or false.
  question: |
    Were automated unit tests involved in this vulnerability?
    Was the original code unit tested, or not unit tested? Did the fix involve
    improving the automated tests?

    For the "code" answer below, look not only at the fix but the surrounding
    code near the fix and determine if and was there were unit tests involved
    for this module.

    For the "fix" answer below, check if the fix for the vulnerability involves
    adding or improving an automated test to ensure this doesn't happen again.
major_events:
  answer: |
    The vulnerability was marked security level low. The person who reported had mentioned the main issue that introduced the vulnerability
    in the first place. So, the person who fixed it knew right away what to do and fixed it within one day.
  events:
  - date: 
    name: 
  - date: 
    name: 
  question: |
    Please record any major events you found in the history of this
    vulnerability. Was the code rewritten at some point? Was a nearby subsystem
    changed? Did the team change?

    The event doesn't need to be directly related to this vulnerability, rather,
    we want to capture what the development team was dealing with at the time.
curation_level: 1
CWE_instructions: |
  Please go to cwe.mitre.org and find the most specific, appropriate CWE entry
  that describes your vulnerability. (Tip: this may not be a good one to start
  with - spend time understanding this vulnerability before making your choice!)
bounty_instructions: |
  If you came across any indications that a bounty was paid out for this
  vulnerability, fill it out here. Or correct it if the information already here
  was wrong. Otherwise, leave it blank.
interesting_commits:
  answer: |
    Due to the nature of this vulnerability, there were no any interesting commits in between. There are no commits to this file
    in between the fix commit and the VCC. The vulnerability lived for around 2 months. It was interesting to see that the person who reported
    the vulnerability knew it was a null pointer problem. The fix was put together shortly with only 4 lines of code.
    In between the fixes, there was a commit that involved removing something called DeleteTask and converting users to conform DeleteTask.
    Even though I didn't understand what DeleteTask is, it was interesting to see that the commit involved modifying 46 files.
  commits:
  - note: modified 46 files
    commit: cff06c5779f85713bc4b09ce110ec26544322d64
  - note: 
    commit: 
  question: |
    Are there any interesting commits between your VCC(s) and fix(es)?

    Write a brief (under 100 words) description of why you think this commit was
    interesting in light of the lessons learned from this vulnerability. Any
    emerging themes?

    If there are no interesting commits, demonstrate that you completed this section by explaining what happened between the VCCs and the fix.
curated_instructions: |
  If you are manually editing this file, then you are "curating" it. Set the
  entry below to "true" as soon as you start. This will enable additional
  integrity checks on this file to make sure you fill everything out properly.
  If you are a student, we cannot accept your work as finished unless curated is
  set to true.
upvotes_instructions: |
  For the first round, ignore this upvotes number.

  For the second round of reviewing, you will be giving a certain amount of
  upvotes to each vulnerability you see. Your peers will tell you how
  interesting they think this vulnerability is, and you'll add that to the
  upvotes score on your branch.
announced_instructions: |
  Was there a date that this vulnerability was announced to the world? You can
  find this in changelogs, blogs, bug reports, or perhaps the CVE date. A good
  source for this is Chrome's Stable Release Channel
  (https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/).
  Please enter your date in YYYY-MM-DD format.
fixes_vcc_instructions: |
  Please put the commit hash in "commit" below (see my example in
  CVE-2011-3092.yml). Fixes and VCCs follow the same format.
description_instructions: |
  You can get an initial description from the CVE entry on cve.mitre.org. These
  descriptions are a fine start, but they can be kind of jargony.

  Rewrite this description in your own words. Make it interesting and easy to
  read to anyone with some programming experience. We can always pull up the NVD
  description later to get more technical.

  Try to still be specific in your description, but remove Chromium-specific
  stuff. Remove references to versions, specific filenames, and other jargon
  that outsiders to Chromium would not understand. Technology like "regular
  expressions" is fine, and security phrases like "invalid write" are fine to
  keep too.