CVE-2017-20005

What is this vulnerability?

CVE-2017-20005 is categorized as a critical Integer Overflow flaw with a CVSS base score of 9.8. Based on our vulnerability intelligence, this issue occurs when the application fails to securely handle untrusted data boundaries.

NGINX before 1.13.6 has a buffer overflow for years that exceed four digits, as demonstrated by a file with a modification date in 1969 that causes an integer overflow (or a false modification date far in the future), when encountered by the autoindex module.

This architectural defect enables adversaries to bypass intended security controls, directly manipulating the application's execution state or data layer. Immediate strategic intervention is required.

Risk Assessment

Impact on Systems

✅ Remote Code Execution: Attackers can overwrite the instruction pointer to redirect execution to malicious shellcode.

✅ Memory Corruption: Overwriting adjacent memory regions can corrupt critical application state, leading to privilege escalation.

✅ Denial of Service: Triggering segmentation faults results in immediate disruption of critical systems.

How to Fix and Mitigate CVE-2017-20005

1. Apply Vendor Patches: Upgrade affected components to their latest, non-vulnerable versions immediately.
2. Implement Input Validation: Ensure all user-supplied data is validated, sanitized, and type-checked before processing.
3. Deploy Runtime Protection: Use Precogs continuous monitoring to detect exploitation attempts in real time.
4. Audit Dependencies: Review and update all third-party libraries and transitive dependencies.

Defending with Precogs AI

Precogs Binary SAST/DAST engine performs deep structural analysis of compiled binaries, detecting memory corruption, control-flow hijacking, and privilege escalation vulnerabilities without requiring source code access.

Use Precogs to continuously scan your codebase, binaries, APIs, and infrastructure for this vulnerability class and related attack patterns. Our AI-powered detection engine combines static analysis with threat intelligence to identify exploitable weaknesses before attackers do.

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Vulnerability Code Signature

Attack Data Flow

Vulnerable Code Pattern

// ❌ VULNERABLE: Integer Overflow
void allocate_memory(unsigned int num_elements) {
    // Taint sink: multiplication may overflow, resulting in a small allocation
    unsigned int size = num_elements * sizeof(int);
    int *array = (int *)malloc(size);
}

Secure Code Pattern

// ✅ SECURE: Safe arithmetic
void allocate_memory(unsigned int num_elements) {
    if (num_elements > UINT_MAX / sizeof(int)) {
        // Handle overflow error
        return;
    }
    unsigned int size = num_elements * sizeof(int);
    int *array = (int *)malloc(size);
}

How Precogs Detects This

Precogs Binary SAST engine identifies unsafe arithmetic operations and integer overflows that lead to memory corruption.