Huge thanks to our Platinum Members Endace and LiveAction,
and our Silver Member Veeam, for supporting the Wireshark Foundation and project.

Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Possible IEEE 802.11 dissector bug

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: Gilbert Ramirez <gram@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 21:10:48 -0500
On Wednesday 21 April 2004 10:43, Gilbert Ramirez wrote:
> On Tuesday 20 April 2004 11:58, Loránd Jakab wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > I have a problem with the PDML output of some IEEE 802.11 frames. I use
> > tethereal to transform binary captures to PDML, then I wrote a Perl
> > script based on the XML::Parser module to extract some information.
> > Recently I came across a probably malformed packed, that causes
> > tethereal to output binary data into the PDML file, which breaks the
> > parser. The binary data is written to the "show" attribute's value
> > field. If it is a malformed packet, it would be best that the dissector
> > would put only ASCII charcters in that field, maybe the hexa or octal
> > values...
> >
> > A packet that demonstrates the problem is attached.
> >
> > Could someone please post a patch?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Lori
>

I've committed this fix. It may change in the future, but it should work for 
you.

--gilbert
Index: epan/ftypes/ftype-string.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /usr/local/cvsroot/ethereal/epan/ftypes/ftype-string.c,v
retrieving revision 1.20
diff -u -r1.20 ftype-string.c
--- epan/ftypes/ftype-string.c	27 Feb 2004 12:00:32 -0000	1.20
+++ epan/ftypes/ftype-string.c	26 Apr 2004 02:07:12 -0000
@@ -34,6 +34,8 @@
 #define CMP_MATCHES NULL
 #endif
 
+#include <ctype.h>
+
 static void
 string_fvalue_new(fvalue_t *fv)
 {
@@ -76,12 +78,21 @@
 		case FTREPR_DFILTER:
 			repr_len = 0;
 			for (p = fv->value.string; (c = *p) != '\0'; p++) {
+				/* Backslashes and double-quotes must
+				 * be escaped */
 				if (c == '\\' || c == '"') {
-					/* Backslashes and double-quotes
-					   must be escaped. */
+					repr_len += 2;
+				}
+				/* Values that can't nicely be represented
+				 * in ASCII need to be escaped. */
+				else if (!isprint(c)) {
+					/* c --> \xNN */
+					repr_len += 4;
+				}
+				/* Other characters are just passed through. */
+				else {
 					repr_len++;
 				}
-				repr_len++;
 			}
 			return repr_len + 2;	/* string plus leading and trailing quotes */
 	}
@@ -94,17 +105,32 @@
 {
 	gchar *p, c;
 	char *bufp;
+	char hex[2];
 
 	if (rtype == FTREPR_DFILTER) {
 		bufp = buf;
 		*bufp++ = '"';
 		for (p = fv->value.string; (c = *p) != '\0'; p++) {
+			/* Backslashes and double-quotes must
+			 * be escaped. */
 			if (c == '\\' || c == '"') {
-				/* Backslashes and double-quotes
-				   must be escaped. */
 				*bufp++ = '\\';
+				*bufp++ = c;
+			}
+			/* Values that can't nicely be represented
+			 * in ASCII need to be escaped. */
+			else if (!isprint(c)) {
+				/* c --> \xNN */
+				sprintf(hex, "%02x", (unsigned int) c);
+				*bufp++ = '\\';
+				*bufp++ = 'x';
+				*bufp++ = hex[0];
+				*bufp++ = hex[1];
+			}
+			/* Other characters are just passed through. */
+			else {
+				*bufp++ = c;
 			}
-			*bufp++ = c;
 		}
 		*bufp++ = '"';
 		*bufp = '\0';