Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 10:40:39 -0700
From: FreeBSD Security Officer security-officer@freebsd.org
To: BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM
Subject: FreeBSD Security Advisory: FreeBSD-SA-00:20.krb5
FreeBSD-SA-00:20 Security Advisory
FreeBSD, Inc.
Topic: krb5 port contains remote and local root exploits.
Category: ports
Module: krb5
Announced: 2000-05-26
Credits: Jeffrey I. Schiller
Affects: Ports collection prior to the correction date
Corrected: 2000-05-17
Vendor status: Patch released
FreeBSD only: NO
I. Background
MIT Kerberos 5 is an implementation of the Kerberos 5 protocol
which is available in the FreeBSD ports collection as the
security/krb5 port. FreeBSD also includes separately-developed
Kerberos 4 and 5 implementations from KTH, which are optionally
installed as part of the base system (KTH Heimdal, the Kerberos 5
implementation, is currently considered “experimental”
software).
II. Problem Description
The MIT Kerberos 5 port, versions 1.1.1 and earlier, contains
several remote and local buffer overflows which can lead to root
compromise.
Note that the implementations of Kerberos shipped in the FreeBSD
base system are separately-developed software to MIT Kerberos and
are believed not to be vulnerable to these problems.
However, a very old release of FreeBSD dating from 1997 (FreeBSD
2.2.5) did ship with a closely MIT-derived Kerberos implementation
(“eBones”) and may be vulnerable to attacks of the kind described
here. Any users still using FreeBSD 2.2.5 and who have installed
the optional Kerberos distribution are urged to upgrade to
2.2.8-STABLE or later. Note however that FreeBSD 2.x is no longer
an officially supported version, nor are security fixes always
provided.
The krb5 port is not installed by default, nor is it “part of
FreeBSD” as such: it is part of the FreeBSD ports collection, which
contains nearly 3300 third-party applications in a ready-to-install
format. The ports collection shipped with FreeBSD 4.0 contains this
problem since it was discovered after the release.
FreeBSD makes no claim about the security of these third-party
applications, although an effort is underway to provide a security
audit of the most security-critical ports.
III. Impact
Local or remote users can obtain root access on the system
running krb5.
If you have not chosen to install the krb5 port, then your
system is not vulnerable to this problem.
IV. Workaround
Due to the nature of the vulnerability there are several
programs and network services which are affected. If recompiling
the port is not practical, please see the MIT Kerberos advisory for
suggested workarounds (including the disabling or adjustment of
services and removal of setuid permissions on vulnerable binaries).
The advisory can be found at the following location:
http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/www/advisories/krb4buf.txt
V. Solution
1) Upgrade your entire ports collection and rebuild the krb5
port. A package is not provided for this port for export control
reasons.
2) download a new port skeleton for the krb5 port from:
and use it to rebuild the port.
3) Use the portcheckout utility to automate option (3) above.
The portcheckout port is available in /usr/ports/devel/portcheckout
or the package can be obtained from:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/packages/devel/portcheckout-1.0.tgz