Original URL: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/03/20/kerberos_vulns/
Critical bugs bite Kerberos
Hell's fire
Posted in Software & Security, 20th March 2008 11:44 GMT
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Multiple critical vulnerabilities have been discovered in version five of the widely-used Kerberos authentication protocol. The most serious of the bugs create a means to either compromise or crash vulnerable systems.
Exploits are yet to surface and patches are available. All releases of MIT Kerberos 5 up to and including krb5-1.6.3 are affected.
Two of the bugs involve errors in processing krb4 requests in MIT Kerberos 5 implementation's Key Distribution Center (KDC) program and libraries. The flaws create a possible mechanism for hackers to execute arbitrary code on targeted systems.
A further two bugs in the Kerberos RPC library, involving the handling of open file descriptors, might be exploited to cause memory corruption.
Developers are advised to update to version krb5-1.6.4 or apply workarounds.
A overview of the bugs by security clearing house Secunia can be found here (http://secunia.com/advisories/29428). A summary of the products affected - along with responses from vendors - has been published by US CERT here (http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/895609) and here (http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/374121).
Kerberos (http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci212437,00.html) was developed by MIT and is a popular means for securely authenticating a request for a service in a computer network. The name derives from Greek mythology, where Cerberus (http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/cerberus.html) is the three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades. ®