Remote crash in Ghost Recon engine

[Luigi Auriemma <aluigi () altervista org>]

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                             Luigi Auriemma

Application:  Ghost Recon engine and some games developed by Redstorm
              http://www.ghostrecon.com
Games/Ver:    Ghost Recon          <= 1.4
              Desert Siege
              The Sum of all Fears <= 1.1.1.0
Platforms:    Windows
Bug:          remote crash, possible system freeze
Risk:         high
Exploitation: remote, versus both server and client
Date:         24 Feb 2004
Author:       Luigi Auriemma
              e-mail: aluigi () altervista org
              web:    http://aluigi.altervista.org


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1) Introduction
2) Bug
3) The Code
4) Fix


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===============
1) Introduction
===============


Ghost Recon is a military FPS game developed by RedStorm
(http://www.redstorm.com) and released in the far 2001 but its engine
has been used also for the game "The sum of all fears" in the 2002.
Furthermore this game is still supported by its gamers community
because there are a lot of MODs created for it.


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2) Bug
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The bug is located in the management of the text strings.
In fact each string is preceded by a 32bit number specifing its size.
When the server (or the client) receives the data it calls some
functions to manage these 32bit numbers and the data that follows them
but the return value of these functions is never checked so we get some
exceptions, where the first is at the instruction
"mov byte ptr [eax], 00" with EAX equal to 0x00000000.

After the crash the system seems unrecoverable and reboot is needed.


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3) The Code
===========


http://aluigi.altervista.org/poc/grboom.zip


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4) Fix
======


No fix available.
I have talked with the developers and the game seems no more supported.


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--- 
Luigi Auriemma
http://aluigi.altervista.org