Compliance Impact

The vulnerability in Flat Assembler 1.71.21 allows local attackers to execute arbitrary code with high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the affected system.

Such a compromise could potentially lead to unauthorized access to sensitive data or disruption of services, which may affect compliance with standards and regulations like GDPR or HIPAA that require protection of data confidentiality and system integrity.

However, the provided information does not explicitly discuss or analyze the direct impact of this vulnerability on compliance with these or other common standards and regulations.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0

Executive Summary

CVE-2017-20228 is a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in Flat Assembler version 1.71.21 and earlier. It occurs when the application processes malicious assembly input that exceeds 5895 bytes, which overwrites the instruction pointer on the stack.

This overflow allows local attackers to execute arbitrary code by crafting input that enables return-oriented programming (ROP) chains, ultimately allowing them to execute shell commands within the context of the application.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0

Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can have severe impacts including allowing local attackers to execute arbitrary code on the affected system.

• Attackers can gain control over the application by executing shell commands.
• It can lead to a full compromise of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the system running Flat Assembler.
• Failed exploitation attempts may cause denial-of-service (DoS) conditions by crashing the application.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0

Detection Guidance

This vulnerability can be detected by identifying if Flat Assembler version 1.7.21 or earlier is installed and in use on your system, as these versions are vulnerable to a stack-based buffer overflow triggered by oversized input exceeding 5895 bytes.

Detection involves monitoring for unusually large assembly input files or commands supplied to the Flat Assembler binary that exceed this size threshold, which could indicate an attempted exploit.

Since the vulnerability is local and triggered by input size, you can check the version of Flat Assembler installed using commands like:

• flatasm -v
• flatasm --version

Additionally, you can monitor process execution or command-line arguments for unusually large input files or scripts targeting Flat Assembler.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0

Mitigation Strategies

Immediate mitigation steps include:

• Avoid using Flat Assembler version 1.7.21 or earlier until a patched version is available.
• Restrict local user access to the Flat Assembler binary to trusted users only, as the attack requires local access.
• Monitor and limit the size of assembly input files or commands supplied to Flat Assembler to prevent oversized inputs exceeding 5895 bytes.
• Consider applying security mitigations such as enabling NX (No-eXecute) and other memory protection features if supported by your environment.

Ultimately, update to a fixed version of Flat Assembler once available to fully remediate the vulnerability.

Useful 0 Not Useful 0