The BEGIN regular expression in the awk script detector in magic/Magdir/commands in file before 5.15 uses multiple wildcards with unlimited repetitions, which allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via a crafted ASCII file that triggers a large amount of backtracking, as demonstrated via a file with many newline characters.

Affected: Ubuntu:14.04:LTS: file

Mike Frysinger discovered that the file awk script detector used multiple wildcard with unlimited repetitions. An attacker could use this issue to cause file to consume resources, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2013-7345)

Francisco Alonso discovered that file incorrectly handled certain CDF documents. A attacker could use this issue to cause file to hang or crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2014-0207, CVE-2014-3478, CVE-2014-3479, CVE-2014-3480, CVE-2014-3487)

Jan Kaluža discovered that file did not properly restrict the amount of data read during regex searches. An attacker could use this issue to cause file to consume resources, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2014-3538)