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Vulnerability Note VU#377544

MIT Kerberos 5 kadmind privilege escalation vulnerability

Overview

MIT Kerberos kadmind contains a privilege escalation vulnerability that may allow an authenticated attacker to execute code with root privileges.

I. Description

Kerberos is a network authentication system that uses a trusted third party to authenticate clients and servers to each other. It is designed to provide strong authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography. MIT Kerberos code is used in network applications from a variety of different vendors and is included in many UNIX and Linux distributions. The kadmind daemon is the administration server that runs on the master Kerberos server.

From the kadmind manual page:

    This command starts the KADM5 administration server. The administration server runs on the master Kerberos server, which stores the KDC principal database and the KADM5 policy database. Kadmind accepts remote requests to administer the information in these databases. Remote requests are sent, for example, by kadmin(8) and the kpasswd(1) command, both of which are clients of kadmind.
Per MITKRB5-SA-2007-006 there is a privilege execution vulnerability in kadmind that may allow an authenticated user with modify policy privileges to execute arbitrary code. Note that per MITKRB5-SA-2007-006, versions of kerberos prior to krb5-1.5 are not affected by this vulnerability.

II. Impact

A local attacker, who has modify policy privileges, may be able to execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges

III. Solution

Update

The Kerberos team has released an update to address this issue. Please see MITKRB5-SA-2007-006 for more information on obtaining fixed software.

Systems Affected

VendorStatusDate Updated
Apple Computer, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
AttachmateWRQ, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Conectiva Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Cray Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
CyberSafe, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Debian GNU/LinuxUnknown24-Aug-2007
EMC CorporationUnknown24-Aug-2007
Engarde Secure LinuxUnknown24-Aug-2007
F5 Networks, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Fedora ProjectUnknown24-Aug-2007
FreeBSD, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
FujitsuUnknown24-Aug-2007
Gentoo LinuxVulnerable26-Oct-2007
Hewlett-Packard CompanyUnknown24-Aug-2007
HitachiUnknown24-Aug-2007
IBM CorporationUnknown24-Aug-2007
IBM Corporation (zseries)Unknown24-Aug-2007
IBM eServerUnknown24-Aug-2007
Immunix Communications, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Ingrian Networks, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Juniper Networks, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
KTH Kerberos TeamUnknown24-Aug-2007
Mandriva, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Microsoft CorporationNot Vulnerable4-Sep-2007
MIT Kerberos Development TeamVulnerable4-Sep-2007
MontaVista Software, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
NEC CorporationUnknown24-Aug-2007
NetBSDUnknown24-Aug-2007
Novell, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
OpenBSDUnknown4-Sep-2007
Openwall GNU/*/LinuxUnknown24-Aug-2007
QNX, Software Systems, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Red Hat, Inc.Vulnerable11-Sep-2007
Silicon Graphics, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Slackware Linux Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007
Sony CorporationUnknown24-Aug-2007
Sun Microsystems, Inc.Not Vulnerable6-Sep-2007
SUSE LinuxVulnerable6-Sep-2007
The SCO GroupUnknown24-Aug-2007
Trustix Secure LinuxUnknown24-Aug-2007
TurbolinuxUnknown24-Aug-2007
UbuntuUnknown24-Aug-2007
UnisysUnknown24-Aug-2007
Wind River Systems, Inc.Unknown24-Aug-2007

References


http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/www/advisories/MITKRB5-SA-2007-006.txt
http://secunia.com/advisories/26676/

Credit

Thanks to the MIT Kerberos team for information that was used in this report.

This document was written by Ryan Giobbi.

Other Information

Date Public09/04/2007
Date First Published09/04/2007 03:19:21 PM
Date Last Updated10/26/2007
CERT Advisory 
CVE-ID(s)CVE-2007-4000
NVD-ID(s)CVE-2007-4000
US-CERT Technical Alerts 
Metric0.63
Document Revision18

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