angler-fishThe Vulnerability History Project

CVE-2014-1732

The original design of the Speech Recognition Bubble view in Google Chrome had a fault where a slower computer could delete the view of web page before the other critical items could be deleted first causing a denial of service to occur.


The coding mistake was a design mistake where an speech file could be attempted to be played yet caused a denial of service under the right conditions. This being a legacy issue, specifically slow, older Window XP, showed that the mistake was a design error of ensuring the order of closing tasks took priority. The fix looks proper, as it implements a correct design pattern for the job, however since there weren't any unit tests to push the limits of the code, only the physical test could be re-created to see if the issue had been resolved for that specific situation, opposed to trying to solve for future issues at hand.
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CVE: CVE-2014-1732
CWE:
- 416
- 399
bugs:
- 352851
repo: 
vccs:
- note: Author added a lot of same line code throughout to replace old code
  commit: b8d34b1bdd2914cf8c481be2db1d98d9f3f6eeb7
- note: |
    Authoer included the speech input bubble view and caused the of the controller
    deleting a file too quickly for certain speech files.
  commit: d589c18f660208b3a721a0ccef7907a6ff945fc1
fixes:
- note: Implemented observer pattern to fix
  commit: 37c6b95f44866f2e76b6682bb28e1737958384e8
bounty:
  date: '2014-04-24 13:46:00.000000000 -04:00'
  amount: 1000.0
  references:
  - http://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2014/04/stable-channel-update_24.html
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: Tyring to handle all possible inputs relating to speech playback is extremely
      complicated
    applies: true
  distrust_input:
    note: 
    applies: 
  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:
- 254773002
- 213153002
- 240223010
upvotes: 
mistakes:
  answer: |
    The coding mistake was a design mistake where an speech file could be attempted
    to be played yet caused a denial of service under the right conditions. This being
    a legacy issue, specifically slow, older Window XP, showed that the mistake was
    a design error of ensuring the order of closing tasks took priority.

    The fix looks proper, as it implements a correct design pattern for the job, however
    since there weren't any unit tests to push the limits of the code, only the physical
    test could be re-created to see if the issue had been resolved for that specific
    situation, opposed to trying to solve for future issues at hand.
  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: '2014-04-26 06:55:05.513000000 -04:00'
subsystem:
  name: views
  answer: One of the views within brower/ui being the speech
  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: '2014-03-14'
  answer: |
    Another person found out that if one used an incorrect length speech file on
    Chrome browser, then manually pressing the microphone input, can cause the whole
    system to crash completely. There is a visual demo on a the bugs forum to show this.
  google: 
  contest: Khalil Zhani
  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: |
  The original design of the Speech Recognition Bubble view in Google Chrome had
  a fault where a slower computer could delete the view of web page before the
  other critical items could be deleted first causing a denial of service to occur.
unit_tested:
  fix: false
  code: true
  answer: "I did not observe any unit tests or newly created tests other than physically\nre-creating
    the cause of breaking Chrome to ensure it doesn't break. The new \ncode was run
    against a general server continuous integration, so put code as true\n"
  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: I did not observe any major events that related to major code changes or
    subsystem change.
  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: 
  commits:
  - note: |
      An error specifically relating to where Speech Bubble crashes due to no parent
      and a simple solution was inputted over a design decision to fix the issue with
      a possible observer pattern.
    commit: 90ba0b7405b7226d7702b633b927d389487a73ec
  - 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.

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