angler-fishThe Vulnerability History Project

CVE-2015-6775

A static method which doesn't use signatures could allow a remote attacker to cause denial of service or possibly access secure information by creating a "fake" object and passing it to this static method.


The Chromuim team's inital commit contained a bug. This snippit of code went through multiple code reviews and tests yet still manages to exist in the system. The code was noted as confusing several times in the commits and yet nothing was not to simplify the code or separate it out into multiple files for easier readability. Complex code tends to hide vulnerabilities such as this one and needs to be carefully reviewed before sent to production.
  • Commits
  • Files Patched
    • Vulnerability-Contributing Commit
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10
    11
    12
    13
    14
    15
    16
    17
    18
    19
    20
    21
    22
    23
    24
    25
    26
    27
    28
    29
    30
    31
    32
    33
    34
    35
    36
    37
    38
    39
    40
    41
    42
    43
    44
    45
    46
    47
    48
    49
    50
    51
    52
    53
    54
    55
    56
    57
    58
    59
    60
    61
    62
    63
    64
    65
    66
    67
    68
    69
    70
    71
    72
    73
    74
    75
    76
    77
    78
    79
    80
    81
    82
    83
    84
    85
    86
    87
    88
    89
    90
    91
    92
    93
    94
    95
    96
    97
    98
    99
    100
    101
    102
    103
    104
    105
    106
    107
    108
    109
    110
    111
    112
    113
    114
    115
    116
    117
    118
    119
    120
    121
    122
    123
    124
    125
    126
    127
    128
    129
    130
    131
    132
    133
    134
    135
    136
    137
    138
    139
    140
    141
    142
    143
    144
    145
    146
    147
    148
    149
    150
    151
    152
    153
    154
    155
    156
    157
    158
    159
    160
    161
    162
    163
    164
    165
    166
    167
    168
    169
    170
    171
    172
    173
    174
    175
    176
    177
    178
    179
    180
    181
    182
    183
    184
    185
    186
    187
    188
    189
    190
    191
    192
    193
    194
    195
    196
    197
    198
    199
    200
    201
    202
    203
    204
    205
    206
    207
    208
    209
    210
    211
    212
    213
    214
    215
    216
    217
    218
    219
    220
    221
    222
    
    CVE: CVE-2015-6775
    CWE:
    - CWE-843
    bugs:
    - 529012
    repo: https://pdfium.googlesource.com/pdfium
    vccs:
    - note: This is the inital commit of the project
      commit: 
    fixes:
    - note: Added signatures
      commit: 
    bounty:
      date: '2015-12-01 14:43:00.000000000 -05:00'
      amount: 3500.0
      references:
      - http://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2015/12/stable-channel-update.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: 
        applies: 
      distrust_input:
        note: This vulnerability allowed for any object to be passed into the function
          without a signature authorization
        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:
    - 1353193004
    - 1393123004
    - 1338073002
    upvotes: 3
    mistakes:
      answer: "The Chromuim team's inital commit contained a bug. This snippit of code
        went\nthrough multiple code reviews and tests yet still manages to exist in the
        \nsystem. The code was noted as confusing several times in the commits and yet
        \nnothing was not to simplify the code or separate it out into multiple files
        \nfor easier readability. Complex code tends to hide vulnerabilities such as \nthis
        one and needs to be carefully reviewed before sent to production.\n"
      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: '2015-12-05 20:59:12.830000000 -05:00'
    subsystem:
      name: PDFium
      answer: PDFium - generates and renders PDFs
      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: 9/7/15
      answer: The vulnerability was discover by Atte, a google employee, who used ClusterFuzz
        to discover the vulnerability.
      google: true
      contest: nil
      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: true
    description: "A static method which doesn't use signatures could allow a remote \nattacker
      to cause denial of service or possibly access secure \ninformation by creating a
      \"fake\" object and passing it to this \nstatic method. \n"
    unit_tested:
      fix: true
      code: false
      answer: There was a fuzzer which did a general scan for this vulnerability but it
        took a while for it to find it.
      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: Didn't find any events
      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: Refactored code and removed several dead functions. I'm surprised that a
          security review was never done during this refactoring to catch this vulnerability.
        commit: 1af240cc45480520b447be767686e73a29c48f9e
      - note: Noted that it was hard to tell which functions come from V8 and another
          file. It was clear that the files in question were confusing. This may have
          led to people not wanting to review the code.
        commit: 506df426d5d64d68e9dc27ffebcf56f6c6a1bccf
      - note: File was refactored again yet error still lives on.
        commit: '09ed30750282bf56a92d0e646ab22c64bea81a36'
      - note: Was noted that it was hard to keep the mapping between v8 and fx abstractions.
        commit: 6df59849472958e7de96da6d9fc7b223b7c1f1c3
      - note: clang-format all code. Because Google decided tabs are better (=
        commit: b048f791a15f2da781a01eba5b09eb9d389f9c11
      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.
    

    See a mistake? Is something missing from our story? We welcome contributions! All of our work is open-source and version-controlled on GitHub. You can curate using our Curation Wizard.

    Use our Curation Wizard

    Or go to GitHub

    • There are no articles here... yet

    Timeline

    Hover over an event to see its title.
    Click on the event to learn more.
    Filter by event type with the buttons below.

    expand_less