# Owning Computer Associates BrightStor through Mailslots · 2006-10-05
Recall from blog/2006-07-11 and TSRT-06-02 that any code relying on the implicit message size limitation of Second-class Mailslots could be exposing a vulnerability. I mentioned that the rare usage of Mailslots will severely mitigate the impact of this new "class" of vulnerability. The fact that no Mailslot bugs have emerged since the initial disclosure is evidence that my assumption was true.
The one 3rd party exposure I have personally come across was just disclosed today: CA BrightStor Discovery Service Mailslot Buffer Overflow Vulnerability. The exposed Mailslot name is 'CheyenneDS' and a no explicit MaxMessageSize is supplied in the call to CreateMailslot, an attacker can cause an exploitable stack-based buffer overflow. Here is the creation of the Mailslot:
casdscsvc.exe -> Asbrdcst.dll 20C14E8C push 0 ; lpSecurityAttributes 20C14E8E push 0 ; lReadTimeout 20C14E90 push 0 ; nMaxMessageSize 20C14E92 push offset Name ; "\\\\.\\mailslot\\CheyenneDS" 20C14E97 stosb 20C14E98 call ds:CreateMailslotA 20C14E9E cmp eax, INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE 20C14EA1 mov mailslot_handle, eax
Later the mailslot handle is read from into a 4k buffer. The read data is also passed to a routine which calls vsprintf into a 1k buffer.
casdscsvc.exe -> Asbrdcst.dll 20C15024 mov eax, mailslot_handle 20C15029 lea edx, [esp+1044h+Buffer_4k] 20C1502D push ecx ; nNumberOfBytesToRead 20C1502E push edx ; lpBuffer 20C1502F push eax ; hFile 20C15030 call edi ; ReadFile 20C15032 test eax, eax 20C15034 jz short read_failed 20C15036 lea ecx, [esp+3Dh] 20C1503A push ecx ; char 20C1503B push offset str_ReadmailslotS ; "ReadMailSlot: %s\n" 20C15040 call not_interesting_call_to_vsnprtinf 20C15045 add esp, 8 20C15048 lea edx, [esp+3Dh] 20C1504C push edx ; va_list 20C1504D push offset str_ReadmailslotS_0 ; "ReadMailSlot: %s" 20C15052 push 0 ; for_debug_log 20C15054 call vsprintf_into_1024_stack_buf_and_debug_log
One would imagine that at least one other instance of a Mailslot handling bug must exist elsewhere. Anyone?