Quantum Secular Labs / Blog / Advisories

CVE-2018-16657: Kamailio: Denial of service

CVE-2018-16657 is rated critical with a CVSS v3.0 base score of 9.8 and affects Kamailio, along with 1 other product in NVD’s configuration data. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication, without any user interaction. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available.

Vulnerability description

In Kamailio before 5.0.7 and 5.1.x before 5.1.4, a crafted SIP message with an invalid Via header causes a segmentation fault and crashes Kamailio. The reason is missing input validation in the crcitt_string_array core function for calculating a CRC hash for To tags. (An additional error is present in the check_via_address core function: this function also misses input validation.) This could result in denial of service and potentially the execution of arbitrary code.

Severity breakdown

CVSS v3.0 9.8: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

  • Attack vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network, with no need for local or physical access.
  • Attack complexity: Low. No special conditions; the attack can be repeated reliably.
  • Privileges required: None. No account or prior access is needed.
  • User interaction: None. No action from any user is needed.
  • Scope: Unchanged. Impact stays within the vulnerable component.
  • Confidentiality impact: High. Total loss of confidentiality; sensitive data can be fully disclosed.
  • Integrity impact: High. Total loss of integrity; data or system state can be fully modified.
  • Availability impact: High. Total loss of availability; the component can be shut down.

Underlying weakness

CWE-476: NULL Pointer Dereference

The product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.

Affected products

  • Kamailio: before 5.0.7; from 5.1.0 before 5.1.4
  • Debian Linux: 8.0; 9.0

References