Author Topic: Buffer Overrun detected  (Read 10331 times)

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ariaaudio

  • Guest
Buffer Overrun detected
« on: April 18, 2004, 05:01:54 PM »
This morning I told my mail client to check for new messages. I received "Buffer overrun detected, ... in ashmaisv.exe" and the program had to disable itself.

Avast! 4.1 Home Edition, Build 4.1.357
Client: Mozilla Thunderbird
OS: Win 2k

Nothing's new, nothings been changed.

I reboot the computer, Avast loaded, I loaded Thunderbird, and then told T-bird to get new messages. It showed over 100 messages in one account (normal business +spam magnet account) and various other counts in my other POP accounts. During download, buffer overran again. Some large group of messaqes were downloaded, will need to re-boot or somehow disable Avast to see what's remaining.

Strategy? I will remove Avast and re-install.

Mike Rocket J Squirrel

ariaaudio

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2004, 06:52:16 PM »
Follow-up:

I handled the situation by pointing my client directly to the servers and downloading all mails w/o benefit of Avast. Re-set back to port 127.0.0.1 and Avast is no longer packing up. Must have been some ugly e-mail. My junk mail filter sorted everything spamlike into a separate folder, none of the ones with today's date have attachments. There are over 2,000 spams in that folder right now, and I could bundle a subset of them and send them to anyone who wants to examine them. For good deals on Viakra and other excellent items.

seand

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #2 on: April 19, 2004, 04:57:31 AM »
I have been using avast for about two weeks with no probelms.  This weekend I encountered this "buffer overrun" twice.  Each time after trying a "restart" on avast in "services" (winxp)  with no success I found that I had to follow the same procedures as ariaaudio and bypass avast to get the messages downloaded.

One additional note:  I am using two "chained" mail proxies: 1. the avast Internet Mail, and 2. Spampal.  This combination has worked very well for almost 6,000 mails since April 8 this year.  The order  I have configured the proxies to process mail is the following:

Thunderbird ---> Spampal ---> avast! -----> pop3 server

(avast! is set to insert "clean: status on all incoming mail)

Incoming mail from the pop3 server is processed first by avast1 and then by spampal.  This scenario has worked well so far, but the buffer overrun just started showing up yesterday (since the "push" update on 04/16/04).

I have not found any attachments in the problem group of emails that might have helped find this problem.

orlafla

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #3 on: April 19, 2004, 06:31:10 AM »
I started receiving the buffer overflow error last night.  I found that the problem corrects itself by rebooting the computer and attempting the download again.  However after several e-mail downloads throughout the day, I again get the buffer overflow and have to reboot again.

I'm using windows ME
avast! version 4.1 Home Edition
Build: Mar2004 (4.1.357)
Xtreme Toolkit version 1.9.4.0
ActiveSkin version 4.2.7.3

and Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1123

Don't know if it has anything to do with it, but it seems to have started happening right after I installed the new critical updates from windows that avast! recommended that I get.


seand

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2004, 07:19:07 AM »
Some additional info I forgot to include in my first post:

I'm using windows XP Pro
avast! version 4.1 Professional
Build: Mar2004 (4.1.357)
Xtreme Toolkit version 1.9.4.0
ActiveSkin version 4.2.7.3

Mail Client: Thunderbird
Spampal version 1.53

I also installed the MS critical updates just hours before the first occurance of this problem.  Rebooting alone did not fix the problem. I had to bypass avast to download the email batch that was causing the problem.

Prior to this problem avast and Spampal were working well together and emails were being scanned and disinfected on a regular basis.

ariaaudio

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #5 on: April 19, 2004, 06:17:10 PM »
Follow-up:

After yesterday's buffer overrun, and subsequent bypass of 127.0.0.1, and successful download of mail messages, I re-set things to put Avast! back in the chain between my client and the POP server as usual and everything was fine.

But this morning, during the ritual download of the night's messages + tons of spam, the overrun occured again. Avast does not provide information on what message is causing the problem.

It is not clear whether the troublesome message remains on the POP server or has downloaded before Avast packed up. If it does remain on the server, then I can find it by bypassing Avast again and downloading messages directly.

Question: does the Avast team read these forums or should I contact Support directly about this? They need to know that some ugly message is messing up the program.

seand

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #6 on: April 19, 2004, 09:27:52 PM »
I had exactly the same experience as ariaaudio this AM, "buffer overrun" while downloading the Monday AM mail.

While waiting for a response to this problem i have gone ahead and uninstalled avast and re-installed etc. in the hope that that might help.  So far it has not crashed again but I suspect only because of a light mail load  since the major download this AM which did crash it.

I sure hope that the MS critical update is not the culprit!  It does have a lot to do with buffer overrun vulnerabilities and I hope that whatever "fix" it installs is not causing avast to exceed some new kind of bounds checking on memory allocation.  Oh well.

seand

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #7 on: April 20, 2004, 08:51:39 AM »
Ariaaudio and Orlafla, there is a new thread http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=3987 that also seems to be about this problem, so it is probably worth while monitoring that also.

Avast is one of those programs one becomes addicted to because of its simplicity and elegance so I am as anxious as you to see a fix for this issue.

Sean D
« Last Edit: April 20, 2004, 08:53:37 AM by seand »

Offline vojtech

  • Avast team
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    • ALWIL Software
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #8 on: April 20, 2004, 09:08:06 AM »
If you have that message, please send it to my mail address (the whole message as an attachment).

To find that message, you can watch the 'Last scanned' item for Internet Mail provider in the On-access Scanner dialog. It can be this message or the following one.

Thank you.

seand

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #9 on: April 20, 2004, 09:22:23 AM »
If the problem reoccurs today I will do my best to try and find the message (or group of messages) and send you the file.  I will have to make some mods to my mail collection process since I have set spam to be deleted automatically.

Sean D

seand

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #10 on: April 24, 2004, 10:42:51 AM »
Ariaaudio amd Orlafla if you are still monitoring this issue please check the thread  "Program's Internal State Corrupted...." http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=3987 for an update.

vojtech, I emailed a zip file to Vlk (he was helping out in that other thread) containing  a message that I was able to repeat the crash with.  If you wish I can also send the file to you.  Please let me know.

Thanks,

Sean D
« Last Edit: April 24, 2004, 10:45:40 AM by seand »

sedina

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #11 on: April 26, 2004, 03:15:24 PM »
seand, thanks for your help! We found the problem (incorrect memory allocation for boundary string, which caused crash of ashmaisv.exe). Program update will be released during tomorrow. sorry for this bug ;-(

seand

  • Guest
Re:Buffer Overrun detected
« Reply #12 on: April 26, 2004, 03:34:53 PM »
Pavel, Thats is great news!  Thanks for getting to this so quickly!  

This is superb support service and I am looking forward to being able to use avast! for all my internet mail scanning, I really like the program.

Thanks Vlk also for taking this issue seriously.

Sean D