Wireshark GSM RP Protocol Dissector Denial-of-Service Vulnerability

A denial-of-service vulnerability has been identified in Wireshark versions 4.6.0 to 4.6.4 and 4.4.0 to 4.4.14. The issue arises in the GSM RP protocol dissector, where a stale global tree is left when RP User-Data is processed via BSSMAP VGCS-SMS. This flaw can lead to a heap buffer overflow, causing a crash.

Impact

Exploitation of this vulnerability leads to a heap buffer overflow, causing a crash of the Wireshark application.

Reproduction

The vulnerability can be reproduced by using TShark, a command-line version of Wireshark, to read a packet capture file (PCAP) that contains malformed GSM RP User-Data packets. This can be done by injecting such packets onto the network or by convincing a user to open a PCAP file that contains them.

Remediation

Users can upgrade to Wireshark versions 4.6.5, 4.4.15 or later to address this vulnerability.