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).

An uninitialized pointer use flaw was found in the way the MIT Kerberos KDC handled initial authentication requests (AS-REQ). A remote, unauthenticated attacker could use this flaw to crash the KDC via a specially crafted AS-REQ request. (CVE-2012-1015)

A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the MIT Kerberos administration daemon, kadmind. A Kerberos administrator who has the 'create' privilege could use this flaw to crash kadmind.
(CVE-2012-1013)

All krb5 users should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues. After installing the updated packages, the krb5kdc and kadmind daemons will be restarted automatically.

This update updates the package from version 1.9.3 to version 1.9.4, mainly to pick up a fix for an interoperability problem with Windows Server 2008R2 read-only domain controllers, and incorporates the upstream fix for CVE-2012-1015, in which the KDC could be made to attempt to free an uninitialized pointer.

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.

The remote NewStart CGSL host, running version MAIN 6.06, has krb5 packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities:

  - plugins/preauth/pkinit/pkinit_crypto_openssl.c in MIT Kerberos 5 (aka krb5) through 1.15.2 mishandles     Distinguished Name (DN) fields, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial     of service (buffer overflow and application crash) in situations involving untrusted X.509 data, related     to the get_matching_data and X509_NAME_oneline_ex functions. NOTE: this has security relevance only in use     cases outside of the MIT Kerberos distribution, e.g., the use of get_matching_data in KDC certauth plugin     code that is specific to Red Hat. (CVE-2017-15088)

  - The process_chpw_request function in schpw.c in the password-changing functionality in kadmind in MIT     Kerberos 5 (aka krb5) 1.7 through 1.9 frees an invalid pointer, which allows remote attackers to execute     arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (daemon crash) via a crafted request that triggers an error     condition. (CVE-2011-0285)

  - schpw.c in the kpasswd service in kadmind in MIT Kerberos 5 (aka krb5) before 1.11.3 does not properly     validate UDP packets before sending responses, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service     (CPU and bandwidth consumption) via a forged packet that triggers a communication loop, as demonstrated by     krb_pingpong.nasl, a related issue to CVE-1999-0103. (CVE-2002-2443)

  - The (1) ftpd and (2) ksu programs in (a) MIT Kerberos 5 (krb5) up to 1.5, and 1.4.x before 1.4.4, and (b)     Heimdal 0.7.2 and earlier, do not check return codes for setuid calls, which might allow local users to     gain privileges by causing setuid to fail to drop privileges. NOTE: as of 20060808, it is not known     whether an exploitable attack scenario exists for these issues. (CVE-2006-3084)

  - The RPC library in Kerberos 5 1.4 through 1.4.4, and 1.5 through 1.5.1, as used in Kerberos administration     daemon (kadmind) and other products that use this library, calls an uninitialized function pointer in     freed memory, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute     arbitrary code via unspecified vectors. (CVE-2006-6143)

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

ID	Name	Product	Family	Published	Updated	Severity
61407	Scientific Linux Security Update : krb5 on SL6.x i386/x86_64 (20120731)	Nessus	Scientific Linux Local Security Checks	8/3/2012	1/14/2021	high
61477	Fedora 16 : krb5-1.9.4-3.fc16 (2012-11370)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	8/10/2012	1/11/2021	high
266225	NewStart CGSL MAIN 6.06 : krb5 Multiple Vulnerabilities (NS-SA-2025-0215)	Nessus	NewStart CGSL Local Security Checks	9/30/2025	10/1/2025	critical

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