full-disclosure - Re: Format String Vulnerabilities in Perl Programs

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Date: Sun Dec  4 03:52:10 2005
From: mjp at securepipe.com (Michael J. Pomraning)
Subject: Re: Format String Vulnerabilities in Perl Programs

On Fri, 2 Dec 2005, Steven M. Christey wrote:

> In particular, the sprintf() and printf() functions in Perl can be
> abused if an attacker can control the contents of the format string.
> Since similar functions are used in C, it is possible that these
> functions will be used more frequently by C programmers who are new to
> Perl.
<<SNIP>> 
>  - for each programming language, identify and publicize all builtin
>    or common library functions that use format strings.

For Perl projects, I'd also nominate syslog(), from the standard Sys::Syslog
module, for special attention.  It's common in *NIX environments regardless
of programmers' backgrounds and is extremely likely to be called with
untrusted data interpolated directly in the format string argument --
syslog("info", "A user said $user_input"), for example.

Regards,
Mike