VULHUB ™

Wwwcount (count.cgi) is a very popular CGI program used to track website usage. In particular, it enumerates the number of hits on given webpages and increments them on a 'counter'. In October of 1997 two remotely exploitable problems were discovered with this program. The first problem was somewhat innocuous in that it only allowed remote users to view .GIF files they were not supposed to have access to. This may be dangerous if the site contains sensitive data in .GIF files such as demographic/financial data in charts etc. The second and most serious problem is a buffer overflow in QUERY_STRING enviroment variable handled by the program. In essence a remote user can send an overloy long query to the program and overflow a buffer in order to execute their own commands as whatever privelage level the program is running as.

Wwwcount (count.cgi) is a very popular CGI program used to track website usage. In particular, it enumerates the number of hits on given webpages and increments them on a 'counter'. In October of 1997 two remotely exploitable problems were discovered with this program. The first problem was somewhat innocuous in that it only allowed remote users to view .GIF files they were not supposed to have access to. This may be dangerous if the site contains sensitive data in .GIF files such as demographic/financial data in charts etc. The second and most serious problem is a buffer overflow in QUERY_STRING enviroment variable handled by the program. In essence a remote user can send an overloy long query to the program and overflow a buffer in order to execute their own commands as whatever privelage level the program is running as.