The client in FreeIPA 2.x and 3.x before 3.1.2 does not properly obtain the Certification Authority (CA) certificate from the server, which allows man-in-the-middle attackers to spoof a join procedure via a crafted certificate.

From Red Hat Security Advisory 2013:0189 :

An updated ipa-client package that fixes one security issue is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

Red Hat Identity Management is a centralized authentication, identity management and authorization solution for both traditional and cloud-based enterprise environments.

A weakness was found in the way IPA clients communicated with IPA servers when initially attempting to join IPA domains. As there was no secure way to provide the IPA server's Certificate Authority (CA) certificate to the client during a join, the IPA client enrollment process was susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. This flaw could allow an attacker to obtain access to the IPA server using the credentials provided by an IPA client, including administrative access to the entire domain if the join was performed using an administrator's credentials. (CVE-2012-5484)

Note: This weakness was only exposed during the initial client join to the realm, because the IPA client did not yet have the CA certificate of the server. Once an IPA client has joined the realm and has obtained the CA certificate of the IPA server, all further communication is secure. If a client were using the OTP (one-time password) method to join to the realm, an attacker could only obtain unprivileged access to the server (enough to only join the realm).

Red Hat would like to thank Petr Mensik for reporting this issue.

When a fix for this flaw has been applied to the client but not yet the server, ipa-client-install, in unattended mode, will fail if you do not have the correct CA certificate locally, noting that you must use the '--force' option to insecurely obtain the certificate. In interactive mode, the certificate will try to be obtained securely from LDAP. If this fails, you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP. In the same situation when using OTP, LDAP will not be queried and you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP.

Users of ipa-client are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which corrects this issue.

From Red Hat Security Advisory 2013:0188 :

Updated ipa packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

Red Hat Identity Management is a centralized authentication, identity management and authorization solution for both traditional and cloud-based enterprise environments.

A weakness was found in the way IPA clients communicated with IPA servers when initially attempting to join IPA domains. As there was no secure way to provide the IPA server's Certificate Authority (CA) certificate to the client during a join, the IPA client enrollment process was susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. This flaw could allow an attacker to obtain access to the IPA server using the credentials provided by an IPA client, including administrative access to the entire domain if the join was performed using an administrator's credentials. (CVE-2012-5484)

Note: This weakness was only exposed during the initial client join to the realm, because the IPA client did not yet have the CA certificate of the server. Once an IPA client has joined the realm and has obtained the CA certificate of the IPA server, all further communication is secure. If a client were using the OTP (one-time password) method to join to the realm, an attacker could only obtain unprivileged access to the server (enough to only join the realm).

Red Hat would like to thank Petr Mensik for reporting this issue.

This update must be installed on both the IPA client and IPA server.
When this update has been applied to the client but not the server, ipa-client-install, in unattended mode, will fail if you do not have the correct CA certificate locally, noting that you must use the '--force' option to insecurely obtain the certificate. In interactive mode, the certificate will try to be obtained securely from LDAP. If this fails, you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP. In the same situation when using OTP, LDAP will not be queried and you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP.

Users of ipa are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which correct this issue. After installing the update, changes in LDAP are handled by ipa-ldap-updater automatically and are effective immediately.

Update to upstream 2.2.1 GA.

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Update to upstream 3.1.2

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

A weakness was found in the way IPA clients communicated with IPA servers when initially attempting to join IPA domains. As there was no secure way to provide the IPA server's Certificate Authority (CA) certificate to the client during a join, the IPA client enrollment process was susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. This flaw could allow an attacker to obtain access to the IPA server using the credentials provided by an IPA client, including administrative access to the entire domain if the join was performed using an administrator's credentials. (CVE-2012-5484)

Note: This weakness was only exposed during the initial client join to the realm, because the IPA client did not yet have the CA certificate of the server. Once an IPA client has joined the realm and has obtained the CA certificate of the IPA server, all further communication is secure. If a client were using the OTP (one-time password) method to join to the realm, an attacker could only obtain unprivileged access to the server (enough to only join the realm).

This update must be installed on both the IPA client and IPA server.
When this update has been applied to the client but not the server, ipa-client-install, in unattended mode, will fail if you do not have the correct CA certificate locally, noting that you must use the '--force' option to insecurely obtain the certificate. In interactive mode, the certificate will try to be obtained securely from LDAP. If this fails, you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP. In the same situation when using OTP, LDAP will not be queried and you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP.

After installing the update, changes in LDAP are handled by ipa-ldap-updater automatically and are effective immediately.

A weakness was found in the way IPA clients communicated with IPA servers when initially attempting to join IPA domains. As there was no secure way to provide the IPA server's Certificate Authority (CA) certificate to the client during a join, the IPA client enrollment process was susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. This flaw could allow an attacker to obtain access to the IPA server using the credentials provided by an IPA client, including administrative access to the entire domain if the join was performed using an administrator's credentials. (CVE-2012-5484)

Note: This weakness was only exposed during the initial client join to the realm, because the IPA client did not yet have the CA certificate of the server. Once an IPA client has joined the realm and has obtained the CA certificate of the IPA server, all further communication is secure. If a client were using the OTP (one-time password) method to join to the realm, an attacker could only obtain unprivileged access to the server (enough to only join the realm).

When a fix for this flaw has been applied to the client but not yet the server, ipa-client-install, in unattended mode, will fail if you do not have the correct CA certificate locally, noting that you must use the '--force' option to insecurely obtain the certificate. In interactive mode, the certificate will try to be obtained securely from LDAP. If this fails, you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP. In the same situation when using OTP, LDAP will not be queried and you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP.

Updated ipa packages that fix one security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

Red Hat Identity Management is a centralized authentication, identity management and authorization solution for both traditional and cloud-based enterprise environments.

A weakness was found in the way IPA clients communicated with IPA servers when initially attempting to join IPA domains. As there was no secure way to provide the IPA server's Certificate Authority (CA) certificate to the client during a join, the IPA client enrollment process was susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. This flaw could allow an attacker to obtain access to the IPA server using the credentials provided by an IPA client, including administrative access to the entire domain if the join was performed using an administrator's credentials. (CVE-2012-5484)

Note: This weakness was only exposed during the initial client join to the realm, because the IPA client did not yet have the CA certificate of the server. Once an IPA client has joined the realm and has obtained the CA certificate of the IPA server, all further communication is secure. If a client were using the OTP (one-time password) method to join to the realm, an attacker could only obtain unprivileged access to the server (enough to only join the realm).

Red Hat would like to thank Petr Mensik for reporting this issue.

This update must be installed on both the IPA client and IPA server.
When this update has been applied to the client but not the server, ipa-client-install, in unattended mode, will fail if you do not have the correct CA certificate locally, noting that you must use the '--force' option to insecurely obtain the certificate. In interactive mode, the certificate will try to be obtained securely from LDAP. If this fails, you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP. In the same situation when using OTP, LDAP will not be queried and you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP.

Users of ipa are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which correct this issue. After installing the update, changes in LDAP are handled by ipa-ldap-updater automatically and are effective immediately.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 host has a package installed that is affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the RHSA-2013:0189 advisory.

  - ipa: weakness when initiating join from IPA client can potentially compromise IPA domain (CVE-2012-5484)

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

An updated ipa-client package that fixes one security issue is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as having important security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from the CVE link in the References section.

Red Hat Identity Management is a centralized authentication, identity management and authorization solution for both traditional and cloud-based enterprise environments.

A weakness was found in the way IPA clients communicated with IPA servers when initially attempting to join IPA domains. As there was no secure way to provide the IPA server's Certificate Authority (CA) certificate to the client during a join, the IPA client enrollment process was susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. This flaw could allow an attacker to obtain access to the IPA server using the credentials provided by an IPA client, including administrative access to the entire domain if the join was performed using an administrator's credentials. (CVE-2012-5484)

Note: This weakness was only exposed during the initial client join to the realm, because the IPA client did not yet have the CA certificate of the server. Once an IPA client has joined the realm and has obtained the CA certificate of the IPA server, all further communication is secure. If a client were using the OTP (one-time password) method to join to the realm, an attacker could only obtain unprivileged access to the server (enough to only join the realm).

Red Hat would like to thank Petr Mensik for reporting this issue.

When a fix for this flaw has been applied to the client but not yet the server, ipa-client-install, in unattended mode, will fail if you do not have the correct CA certificate locally, noting that you must use the '--force' option to insecurely obtain the certificate. In interactive mode, the certificate will try to be obtained securely from LDAP. If this fails, you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP. In the same situation when using OTP, LDAP will not be queried and you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP.

Users of ipa-client are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which corrects this issue.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
68715	Oracle Linux 5 : ipa-client (ELSA-2013-0189)	Nessus	Oracle Linux Local Security Checks	high
68714	Oracle Linux 6 : ipa (ELSA-2013-0188)	Nessus	Oracle Linux Local Security Checks	high
64855	Fedora 17 : freeipa-2.2.2-1.fc17 (2013-2434)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
64419	Fedora 18 : freeipa-3.1.2-1.fc18 (2013-1445)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
64091	Scientific Linux Security Update : ipa on SL6.x i386/x86_64 (20130123)	Nessus	Scientific Linux Local Security Checks	high
64090	Scientific Linux Security Update : ipa-client on SL5.x i386/x86_64 (20130123)	Nessus	Scientific Linux Local Security Checks	high
64081	CentOS 6 : ipa (CESA-2013:0188)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	high
63676	RHEL 5 : ipa-client (RHSA-2013:0189)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	medium
63675	RHEL 6 : ipa (RHSA-2013:0188)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high
63673	CentOS 5 : ipa-client (CESA-2013:0189)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2012-5484

medium

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high

high

high

high

high

medium

high

high