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Kerberos administration daemon fails to properly initialize function pointers

Vulnerability Note VU#481564

Original Release Date: 2007-01-09 | Last Revised: 2007-05-10

Overview

The Kerberos administration daemon fails to properly initialize pointers. This vulnerability may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service.

Description

A vulnerability exists in the way the Kerberos administration daemon handles pointers that may allow a remote, unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code. According to MIT krb5 Security Advisory 2006-002:

The Kerberos administration daemon, "kadmind", can execute arbitrary code by calling through a function pointer located in freed memory. This vulnerability results from bugs in the server-side portion of the RPC library.

Note that krb5-1.4 through krb5-1.4.4, and krb5-1.5 through krb5-1.5.1 are affected by this vulnerability. Other server applications that utilize the RPC library provided with MIT krb5 may also be affected.

This vulnerability can be triggered by sending a specially crafted Kerberos packet to a vulnerable system.

Impact

A remote, unauthenticated user may be able to execute arbitrary code resulting in the compromise of the Kerberos key database or cause a denial of service.

Solution

Apply Patch

A patch can be obtained from MIT krb5 Security Advisory 2006-002. MIT also states that this will be addressed in the upcoming krb5-1.6 release and krb5-1.5.2 patch release.

Vendor Information

481564
 

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References

Acknowledgements

This issue is addressed in MIT krb5 Security Advisory 2006-002. MIT credits Andrew Korty from Indiana University for reporting this issue.

This document was written by Chris Taschner.

Other Information

CVE IDs: CVE-2006-6143
Severity Metric: 20.93
Date Public: 2007-01-09
Date First Published: 2007-01-09
Date Last Updated: 2007-05-10 14:42 UTC
Document Revision: 55

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