Software Engineering Institute

Notified:  September 17, 2002 Updated: September 20, 2002

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) supports the IKE protocol. IKE is turned off by default, and there is no easy way to enable its operation in our default system configuration. There are no components in Mac OS X that make use of IKE. The Aggressive Mode negotiation mode of IKE is a protocol that certain users may wish to use in certain circumstances, and we do not at this time plan to remove this standard protocol from Mac OS X.

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

The CERT/CC has no additional comments at this time.

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Notified:  September 03, 2002 Updated: October 08, 2002

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

This information will also be published at http://www.checkpoint.com/techsupport/alerts.

Check Point Statement on use of IKE Aggressive Mode

A document has recently been published alleging vulnerabilities in the Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1 product, involving the use of SecuRemote/SecureClient and IKE Aggressive mode. Check Point does not recommend the use of IKE Aggressive Mode, because of many well-known limitations in the protocol, and the Check Point products offer much more secure alternatives.

In the vulnerability claim document, two issues were presented:
1) usernames are passed in cleartext using IKE Aggressive Mode
2) usernames are susceptible to brute-force guessing when using IKE Aggressive Mode

The first item is merely an accurate description of the IKE protocol. Check Point has no bug or vulnerability, but has correctly implemented the IKE standard for Aggressive Mode. The passing of usernames in cleartext is common to any vendors of IKE products who support Aggressive Mode. The claim of a vulnerability is incorrect.

Because of such well-known weaknesses in the IKE Aggressive Mode standard, Check Point authored and published an extension called Hybrid Mode which allows the secure use of all supported authentication schemes (e.g., RADIUS or TACACS) without sending usernames in cleartext. This extension has been incorporated in the product since the 4.1 SP1 release (February 2000), with
hybrid mode recommended over Aggressive Mode for enhanced security.

The second item exists only in VPN-1/FireWall-1 v4.1 modules which are still configured to support SecuRemote/SecureClient connections using IKE Aggressive Mode, despite the availability of more secure options in the product. Note, again, that the guessable usernames in this scenario are, by design of the IKE protocol, sent in cleartext. By default, Aggressive Mode is not enabled in NG. In 4.1, the recommended configuration is to disable Aggressive Mode and use Hybrid Mode instead (which involves no change to the user experience).

Scott Walker Register
FireWall-1 Product Manager
Check Point Software Technologies, Inc.
ph: 561.989.5418 fax: 561.997.9392

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

The CERT/CC has no additional comments at this time.

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

Notified:  September 24, 2002 Updated: October 15, 2002

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

Though it is true that, with aggressive mode, identification data will be transmitted in clear, identification data can be anything - it is just a string. It doesn't necessarily reflect any of user accounts on a system.

For our implementation, the identification data is just a string, and has no relationship whatsoever with UNIX accounts or other sensitive data. Also, the shared secret used for shared secret authentication is totally separate from UNIX passwords. (of course, if a user chooses to configure identification string/shared secret to be equal to UNIX account name/password, it can be done)

So the severity really depends on how a user configures our program.

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

The CERT/CC has no additional comments at this time.

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

Notified:  September 17, 2002 Updated: October 17, 2002

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

See KAME's statement, as NetBSD uses racoon IKE daemon from KAME.

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

KAME Project Information for VU#886601 is located at http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/JPLA-5EQRD2.

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