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NetGear wireless driver fails to properly process certain 802.11 management frames

Vulnerability Note VU#395496

Original Release Date: 2006-11-20 | Last Revised: 2006-11-20

Overview

A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the Netgear MA521nd5.SYS wireless driver. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, or cause a denial-of-service condition.

Description

The MA521nd5.SYS driver is a wireless (802.11b) device driver produced by Netgear.

A buffer overflow vulnerability has been reported in the MA521nd5.SYS driver. An attacker within radio range may be able to trigger the overflow by sending a specially-crafted 802.11 management frame to a vulnerable system. Since 802.11b and 802.11g management frames are not encrypted, using wireless encryption (WEP/WPA) does not mitigate this vulnerability.


Note that Linux or Unix systems that use NDISWrapper or similar technologies to load the MA521nd5.SYS driver may also be vulnerable.

Impact

A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code, or cause a denial-of-service condition on a vulnerable system.

Solution

We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem.


Disable wireless adapters

Disabling wireless adapters may reduce the chances of this vulnerability being exploited.

Vendor Information

395496
 
Expand all

Netgear, Inc. Unknown

Updated:  November 20, 2006

Status

Unknown

Vendor Statement

We have not received a statement from the vendor.

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.


CVSS Metrics

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References

Acknowledgements

This issue was reported by Laurent Butti, H D Moore and LMH on the Month of Kernel Bugs website.

This document was written by Ryan Giobbi.

Other Information

CVE IDs: CVE-2006-6059
Severity Metric: 3.99
Date Public: 2006-11-18
Date First Published: 2006-11-20
Date Last Updated: 2006-11-20 14:17 UTC
Document Revision: 28

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