Software Engineering Institute

CWE-121: Stack-based Buffer Overflow - CVE-2016-2344

The Autodesk Knowledge Network describes Backburner as network-rendering management software that supports Autodesk products. The Backburner Manager process listens on TCP/UDP port 3234 by default, though the user may configure the application to use another port. Also note that the process listens on other ports, which may also expose the vulnerability. There is no authentication scheme to restrict access to the service, and the length of command input is not checked. An unauthenticated attacker may directly send specially crafted commands to the interface to overflow the stack buffer, which may be leveraged to crash the service or to gain arbitrary code execution in the context of the user who started the service. Since the software by design permits unauthenticated users to execute arbitrary commands using the cmdjob utility (refer to CVE-2007-4749), the CVSS score below only accounts for exploitation to achieve denial of service.

Note that in the original Symantec disclosure document describing CVE-2007-4749, the vendor advises users concerned by the security implications to "remove the cmdjob utility from his system." This is not a suitable workaround since the absence of the cmdjob client on the server host has no effect on a remote user's ability to run the cmdjob utility on another system or to produce the network traffic that the official cmdjob client generates.

A remote, unauthenticated attacker can execute arbitrary code and create a denial of service condition in Backburner 2016.

The CERT/CC is currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem and recommends the following workaround.

Restrict access

Restrict access to the Backburner 2016 manager.exe service to trusted users and networks. By default, the service listens on TCP/UDP port 3234 in addition to others that should be identified by a system administrator.