SkipNavigation
US-CERT
American Flag
  Vulnerability
Notes
Database

Search Vulnerability Notes

Vulnerability Notes Help Information


 
 View Notes By
  Name

ID Number

CVE Name

Date Public

Date Published

Date Updated

Severity Metric



 Other Documents
  Technical Alerts

Technical Bulletins

Alerts

Security Tips

Vulnerability Note VU#787523

MIT Kerberos V5 KDC logging routines use unsafe format strings

Overview

Early releases of the MIT Kerberos V5 KDC contain format string vulnerabilities that can be used by unauthenticated remote attackers to conduct denial of service attacks on KDC servers.

I. Description

Logging routines in some (unspecified) versions of the MIT Kerberos V5 Key Distribution Center (KDC) use Kerberos principal names as format strings for printf-style output functions. Principal names that contain certain printf format specifiers (such as '%n') may cause the KDC logging routines to read from or write to memory. Some vulnerable functions are called prior to authentication, therefore these vulnerabilities can be exploited by remote anonymous users. Note that vulnerabilities of this type may allow the execution of arbitrary code under certain circumstances.

II. Impact

This vulnerability may allow unauthenticated remote attackers to crash affected KDC processes, resulting in a denial of service condition.

III. Solution

This vulnerability was addressed in MIT Kerberos V5 1.2.5, released on April 30, 2002. MIT krb5 Security Advisory 2003-001 provides additional information from MIT and is available at:
For information regarding other vendors who may be affected, please see the vendor section of this document.

Systems Affected

VendorStatusDate NotifiedDate Updated
KTH KerberosUnknown29-Jan-2003
Microsoft CorporationNot Vulnerable31-Jan-2003
MIT Kerberos Development TeamVulnerable30-Jan-2003

References


http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/www/advisories/MITKRB5-SA-2003-001-multiple.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1510.txt

Credit

The CERT/CC thanks to E. Larry Lidz for discovering this vulnerability and Ken Raeburn of MIT for bringing it to our attention.

This document was written by Shawn Van Ittersum and Jeffrey P. Lanza.

Other Information

Date Public:2003-01-28
Date First Published:2003-01-31
Date Last Updated:2003-01-31
CERT Advisory: 
CVE-ID(s):CAN-2003-0060
NVD-ID(s):CAN-2003-0060
US-CERT Technical Alerts: 
Metric:19.69
Document Revision:24

If you have feedback, comments, or additional information about this vulnerability, please send us email.
 

 
Page Corner Image
Copyright 2003 Carnegie Mellon University
Disclaimers and copyright information
Get Adobe Reader Get Adobe Reader