Bug#232430: libc6: strtof is completelly broken, garbage is returned

[Roberto Gordo Saez <rgs@linalco.com>]

Package: libc6
Version: 2.3.2.ds1-11
Severity: important

The function strtof does not work at all, it always returns garbage.
Many programs are silently broken by this bug. This small
example will return a random number, without using rand :-)

    #include <stdlib.h>
    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <stddef.h>

    int main (void)
    {
        printf ("%f\n", strtof ("5E+2", NULL));
        return 0;
    }

Actually, the value returned by strtof seems to come from a pointer
freely walking through the stack; declaring a new, unused variable
sometimes makes a different value returned, like in this case:

    int main (void)
    {
    	int a;
        printf ("%f\n", strtof ("5E+2", NULL));
        return 0;
    }

Is not Debian specific. Tested on Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1, Gentoo
and Debian Sid (powerpc and x86). Many glibc versions are affected, not
only this one. Probably there are no security implications, but still
not tested.

It is not something new:
http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-glibc/2002-03/msg00336.html

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.2
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US

Versions of packages libc6 depends on:
ii  libdb1-compat                 2.1.3-7    The Berkeley database routines [gl

-- no debconf information