Updated krb5 packages that fix multiple security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links associated with each description below.
Kerberos is a network authentication system which allows clients and servers to authenticate to each other using symmetric encryption and a trusted third-party, the Key Distribution Center (KDC).
Security Fixes
- CVE-2011-1527, CVE-2011-1528, CVE-2011-1529
Multiple NULL pointer dereference and assertion failure flaws were found in the MIT Kerberos KDC when it was configured to use an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) or Berkeley Database (Berkeley DB) back end. A remote attacker could use these flaws to crash the KDC.
Red Hat would like to thank the MIT Kerberos project for reporting the
CVE-2011-1527 issue. Upstream acknowledges Andrej Ota as the original reporter of
CVE-2011-1527.
All krb5 users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct these issues. After installing the updated packages, the krb5kdc daemon will be restarted automatically.
Updated krb5 packages that fix multiple bugs are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The Kerberos authentication system allows clients and servers to authenticate to each other using symmetric encryption and the help of a trusted third party, the KDC.
Bug Fixes
- BZ#651466
Kerberos version 1.8 and later defaults to disabling support for older encryption types which are no longer believed to be sufficiently strong. When upgrading from older versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a number of services which run at the key distribution center (KDC) need to have their keys reset to include keys for newer encryption types. This update adds a spot-check to the KDC init script which assist in diagnosing this condition.
- BZ#701446,BZ#746341
Previously, a client could fail to connect to a KDC if a sufficiently large number of descriptors was already in use. This update modifies the Kerberos libraries to switch to using poll() instead of select(), which does not suffer from this limitation.
- BZ#713252,BZ#729068
Previously, the kadmin client could fail to establish a connection with certain older versions of the kadmin daemon. In these situations, the server often logged a diagnostic noting that the client had supplied it with incorrect channel bindings. This update modifies the client to allow it to once again contact those versions of kadmind.
- BZ#713518
Previously, a client failed to obtain credentials for authentication from KDCs that rejected requests specifying unrecognized options and that also did not support the canonicalize option. With this update, obtaining credentials also works with these KDCs.
- BZ#714217
Previously, locally-applied patches, which attempt to ensure that any files created by the Kerberos libraries are given and keep the correct SELinux file labels, did not correctly ensure that replay cache files kept their labels. This update corrects the patch to cover this case.
- BZ#717378
Previously, the Kerberos client libraries could inadvertently trigger an address-to-name lookup inside of the resolver libraries when attempting to derive a principal name from a combination of a service name and a host name, even if the user disabled them using the "rdns" setting in the krb5.conf file. This update modifies the client library to prevent it from triggering these lookups.
- BZ#724033
Previously, the kadmind init script could erroneously refuse to start the kadmind server on a KDC, if the realm database was moved to a non-default location, or a non-default kdb backend was in use. This update removes the logic from the init script which caused it to do so.
- BZ#729044
Previously, the krb5-debuginfo package excluded several source files used to build the package. This update ensures that the affected files are still included.
- BZ#734341
Previously, obtaining the Kerberos credentials for services could fail fail if the target server was in another trusted realm than the client. This update modifies krb5-libs so that the client obtains the credentials as expected.
All Kerberos users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.
Updated krb5 packages that fixes a bug is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Kerberos is a network authentication system which allows clients and servers to authenticate to each other with the help of a trusted third party, a KDC (Key Distribution Center).
Bug Fix
- BZ#714866
Certain versions of the KDC software (included for example in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 and 3) reject requests, which include KDC options the software does not recognize, and do not support the "canonicalize" option. When a client was configured to use one of these versions of the KDC software, the client failed to obtain credentials for authentication to other services. This interoperability regression was introduced in the update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1. With this update, an upstream patch has been provided to fix this bug.
Users of krb5 are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix this bug.