Broadcast client buffer-overflow in Terminator 3 1.0

2004-03-2500:00:00

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                         Luigi Auriemma

Application: Terminator 3: War of the Machines
http://www.t3war.com
Versions: 1.0
Platforms: Windows
Bug: broadcast client's buffer-overflow
Risk: very high
Exploitation: remote and automatic, versus clients
Date: 19 Mar 2004
Author: Luigi Auriemma
e-mail: [email protected]
web: http://aluigi.altervista.org

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

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

"Terminator 3: War of the Machines" is a multiplayer FPS game developed
by Clevers (http://www.clevers.com) and based on the homonym Swarzy's
movie.

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2) Bug

The bug is a broadcast buffer-overflow affecting clients.
Everytime a user enters in the multiplayer menu, the game contacts the
master server and then each online server automatically.
The bug happens during the usage of some vulnerable instructions that
are exactly the following:

char ServerInfoTemp[200];
...
for &#40;int i = 0; i &lt; strlen&#40;ServerInfo&#41;; i++&#41; {
    ServerInfoTemp[i] = toupper&#40;ServerInfo[i]&#41;;
}

They get a string (ServerInfo) previously generated with the server's
IP and port and all the values in its reply, after which they put this
string into a new smaller buffer (ServerInfoTemp) converting the chars
to upper case.

The effects of this bug are the usual 2 known problems:

automatic buffer-overflow (here with the upper-case limitation)
network Denial of service, nobody can use the game online

For who wanna see the problem at runtime, the vulnerable instructions
in the executable of the pre-release demo are the loop between 004953d4
and 004953fe.

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