Wireshark is the world’s foremost network protocol analyzer, and is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many industries and educational institutions.
Wireshark 1.0.6 fixes the following vulnerabilities:
- On non-Windows systems, Wireshark could crash if the HOME environment variable contained sprintf-style string formatting characters. Discovered by babi. (Bug 3150) Versions affected: 0.99.8 to 1.0.5
- Wireshark could crash while reading a malformed NetScreen snoop file. Discovered by babi. (Bug 3151) Versions affected: 0.99.7 to 1.0.5
- Wireshark could crash while reading a Tektronix K12 text capture file. (Bug 1937) Versions affected: 0.99.6 to 1.0.5
If are running Wireshark 1.0.5 or earlier (including Ethereal 0.99.0) and cannot upgrade to 1.0.6, you can work around each of the problems listed above by doing the following:
- For each user that will run Wireshark (including root if you’re running Wireshark as a privileged user), make sure the HOME environment variable doesnt’ contain any “%” characters.
- Don’t open any Tektronix K12 text or NetScreen capture files.