The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 7 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the RHSA-2016:2583 advisory.

    The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is used to synchronize a computer's time with another referenced time     source. These packages include the ntpd service which continuously adjusts system time and utilities used     to query and configure the ntpd service.

    Security Fix(es):

    * It was found that the fix for CVE-2014-9750 was incomplete: three issues were found in the value length     checks in NTP's ntp_crypto.c, where a packet with particular autokey operations that contained malicious     data was not always being completely validated. A remote attacker could use a specially crafted NTP packet     to crash ntpd. (CVE-2015-7691, CVE-2015-7692, CVE-2015-7702)

    * A memory leak flaw was found in ntpd's CRYPTO_ASSOC. If ntpd was configured to use autokey     authentication, an attacker could send packets to ntpd that would, after several days of ongoing attack,     cause it to run out of memory. (CVE-2015-7701)

    * An off-by-one flaw, leading to a buffer overflow, was found in cookedprint functionality of ntpq. A     specially crafted NTP packet could potentially cause ntpq to crash. (CVE-2015-7852)

    * A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the way ntpd processed 'ntpdc reslist' commands that     queried restriction lists with a large amount of entries. A remote attacker could potentially use this     flaw to crash ntpd. (CVE-2015-7977)

    * A stack-based buffer overflow flaw was found in the way ntpd processed 'ntpdc reslist' commands that     queried restriction lists with a large amount of entries. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash     ntpd. (CVE-2015-7978)

    * It was found that when NTP was configured in broadcast mode, a remote attacker could broadcast packets     with bad authentication to all clients. The clients, upon receiving the malformed packets, would break the     association with the broadcast server, causing them to become out of sync over a longer period of time.
    (CVE-2015-7979)

    * It was found that ntpd could crash due to an uninitialized variable when processing malformed logconfig     configuration commands. (CVE-2015-5194)

    * It was found that ntpd would exit with a segmentation fault when a statistics type that was not enabled     during compilation (e.g. timingstats) was referenced by the statistics or filegen configuration command.
    (CVE-2015-5195)

    * It was found that NTP's :config command could be used to set the pidfile and driftfile paths without any     restrictions. A remote attacker could use this flaw to overwrite a file on the file system with a file     containing the pid of the ntpd process (immediately) or the current estimated drift of the system clock     (in hourly intervals). (CVE-2015-5196, CVE-2015-7703)

    * It was discovered that the sntp utility could become unresponsive due to being caught in an infinite     loop when processing a crafted NTP packet. (CVE-2015-5219)

    * A flaw was found in the way NTP verified trusted keys during symmetric key authentication. An     authenticated client (A) could use this flaw to modify a packet sent between a server (B) and a client (C)     using a key that is different from the one known to the client (A). (CVE-2015-7974)

    * A flaw was found in the way the ntpq client processed certain incoming packets in a loop in the     getresponse() function. A remote attacker could potentially use this flaw to crash an ntpq client     instance. (CVE-2015-8158)

    The CVE-2015-5219 and CVE-2015-7703 issues were discovered by Miroslav Lichvr (Red Hat).

    Additional Changes:

    For detailed information on changes in this release, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Release Notes     linked from the References section.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux security advisory.

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

Detections

Analytics

RHEL 7 : ntp (RHSA-2016:2583)

high Nessus Plugin ID 94546

Version 2.22

Version 2.21

Version 2.22 Aug 29, 2025, 3:06 PM CVE (set "CVE" coverage to "CVE-2015-5194,CVE-2015-5195,CVE-2015-5219,CVE-2015-7691,CVE-2015-7692,CVE-2015-7701,CVE-2015-7702,CVE-2015-7703,CVE-2015-7852,CVE-2015-7974,CVE-2015-7977,CVE-2015-7978,CVE-2015-7979,CVE-2015-8158") CVSS metrics ("Cvssv4 score" set to 0.0) CVSSv2 severity (based on None, severity decreased from "High" to "Low") Detection (updated detection logic) Exploit attributes ("Exploit available" set to "True") Exploit attributes ("Exploitability ease" changed from "No known exploits are available" to "Exploits are available") Plugin metadata Plugin Feed: 202508291506
Version 2.21 Nov 5, 2024, 12:50 PM CVSS metrics ("CVSSv2 score" set to 4.3) CVSS metrics ("CVSSv2 vector" set to "CVSS2#AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N") CVSS metrics ("Cvssv4 score" set to 0.0) CVSS temporal metrics ("CVSSv2 temporal vector" set to "CVSS2#E:POC/RL:OF/RC:C") CVSS temporal metrics ("CVSSv3 temporal vector" set to "CVSS:3.0/E:P/RL:O/RC:C") CVSSv2 score source (set to "CVE-2015-7703") CVSSv2 severity (based on None, severity decreased from "High" to "Low") CVSSv3 score source (set to "CVE-2015-7974") Detection (updated detection logic) Plugin metadata Reference Plugin Feed: 202411051250