Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-121

Allowed

Stack-based Buffer Overflow

Abstraction: Variant · Status: Draft

A stack-based buffer overflow condition is a condition where the buffer being overwritten is allocated on the stack (i.e., is a local variable or, rarely, a parameter to a function).

3361 vulnerabilities reference this CWE, most recent first.

CVE-2008-20001 (GCVE-0-2008-20001)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2025-08-30 13:42 – Updated: 2026-05-15 11:13

Title

activePDF WebGrabber ActiveX Control Buffer Overflow

Summary

activePDF WebGrabber version 3.8.2.0 contains a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the GetStatus() method of the APWebGrb.ocx ActiveX control. By passing an overly long string to this method, a remote attacker can execute arbitrary code in the context of the vulnerable process. Although the control is not marked safe for scripting, exploitation is possible via crafted HTML content in Internet Explorer under permissive security settings.

Severity

7.5 (High)


                        
                          CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

SSVC

Exploitation: poc Automatable: no Technical Impact: total

CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)

Decision recorded 2025-09-02 20:47 UTC

CWE

CWE-121 - Stack-based Buffer Overflow

Assigner

VulnCheck CNA

References

6 references

URL	Tags
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rapid7/metasplo…	exploit
https://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/16635	exploit
https://web.archive.org/web/20081219180353/http:/…	product
https://support.activepdf.com/support/solutions/3…	product
https://documentation.activepdf.com/WebGrabber_GS…	product
https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/activepdf-we…	third-party-advisory

Impacted products

1 product

Vendor	Product	Version
activePDF	WebGrabber	Affected: 0 , ≤ 3.8.2.0 (custom) cpe:2.3:a:activepdf:webgrabber::::::::

Date Public

2010-11-11 00:00

Credits

Show details on NVD website

JSON

To clipboard

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Mitigation MIT-10

Operation Build and Compilation

Strategy: Environment Hardening

Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index checking.
D3-SFCV (Stack Frame Canary Validation) from D3FEND [REF-1334] discusses canary-based detection in detail.

Mitigation

Architecture and Design

Use an abstraction library to abstract away risky APIs. Not a complete solution.

Mitigation

Implementation

Implement and perform bounds checking on input.

Mitigation

Implementation

Do not use dangerous functions such as gets. Use safer, equivalent functions which check for boundary errors.

Mitigation MIT-11

Operation Build and Compilation

Strategy: Environment Hardening

Run or compile the software using features or extensions that randomly arrange the positions of a program's executable and libraries in memory. Because this makes the addresses unpredictable, it can prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to exploitable code.
Examples include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) [REF-58] [REF-60] and Position-Independent Executables (PIE) [REF-64]. Imported modules may be similarly realigned if their default memory addresses conflict with other modules, in a process known as "rebasing" (for Windows) and "prelinking" (for Linux) [REF-1332] using randomly generated addresses. ASLR for libraries cannot be used in conjunction with prelink since it would require relocating the libraries at run-time, defeating the whole purpose of prelinking.
For more information on these techniques see D3-SAOR (Segment Address Offset Randomization) from D3FEND [REF-1335].

No CAPEC attack patterns related to this CWE.

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