A new version of the ClamAV malware scanner released this week fixes a critical remote code execution vulnerability that an attacker can exploit without any authentication.
The vulnerability (CVE-2023-20032) affects versions 1.0.0 and earlier, 0.105.1 and earlier, and 0.103.7 and earlier of the ClamAV scanning engine and is patched in version 1.0.1.
“This vulnerability is due to a missing buffer size check that may result in a heap buffer overflow write. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by submitting a crafted HFS+ partition file to be scanned by ClamAV on an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the ClamAV scanning process, or else crash the process, resulting in a denial of service (DoS) condition,” the advisory from Cisco, which owns ClamAV, says.
The new version also includes a fix for a less-serious information leak vulnerability (CVE-2023-20052) that affects the same versions as the RCE bug.
“This vulnerability is due to enabling XML entity substitution that may result in XML external entity injection. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by submitting a crafted DMG file to be scanned by ClamAV on an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to leak bytes from any file that may be read by the ClamAV scanning process,” the advisory says.
Both vulnerabilities affect a handful of versions of the Cisco Secure Endpoint. The fixed releases are version 1.20.2 for Linux, version 1.21.1 for Mac, and version 7.5.9 and 8.1.5 for Windows. The RCE flaw also affects the Secure Web Appliance and is fixed in version 14.0.4-005 and 15.0.0-254.