VMSA-2009-0008 : ESX Service Console update for krb5

critical Nessus Plugin ID 40393

Synopsis

The remote VMware ESX host is missing a security-related patch.

Description

a. Service Console package krb5 update

Kerberos is a network authentication protocol. It is designed to provide strong authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography.

An input validation flaw in the asn1_decode_generaltime function in MIT Kerberos 5 before 1.6.4 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code via vectors involving an invalid DER encoding that triggers a free of an uninitialized pointer.

A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash a network service using the MIT Kerberos library, such as kadmind or krb5kdc, by causing it to dereference or free an uninitialized pointer or, possibly, execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running the service.

NOTE: ESX by default is unaffected by this issue, the daemons kadmind and krb5kdc are not installed in ESX.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2009-0846 to this issue.

In addition the ESX 4.0 Service Console krb5 package was also updated for CVE-2009-0845, and CVE-2009-0844 and RHBA-2009-0135.

MIT Kerberos versions 5 1.5 through 1.6.3 might allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service by using invalid ContextFlags data in the reqFlags field in a negTokenInit token.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2009-0845 to this issue.

MIT Kerberos 5 before version 1.6.4 might allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code by using vectors involving an invalid DER encoding that triggers a free of an uninitialized pointer.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2009-0846 to this issue.

For ESX 4.0, 3.5, 3.0.3 the Service Console package pam_krb5 has also been upgraded. For details on the non-security issues that this upgrade addresses, refer to the respective KB article listed in section 4 below.

Solution

Apply the missing patch.

See Also

http://lists.vmware.com/pipermail/security-announce/2009/000063.html

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 40393

File Name: vmware_VMSA-2009-0008.nasl

Version: 1.21

Type: local

Published: 7/27/2009

Updated: 1/6/2021

Supported Sensors: Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: High

Score: 7.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 10

Temporal Score: 7.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:vmware:esx:2.5.5, cpe:/o:vmware:esx:3.0.3, cpe:/o:vmware:esx:3.5, cpe:/o:vmware:esx:4.0

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/VMware/release, Host/VMware/version

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 6/30/2009

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2009-0844, CVE-2009-0845, CVE-2009-0846

BID: 34257, 34409

CWE: 119, 20

VMSA: 2009-0008