CVE-2015-7979
Description
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.
Statement
This issue affects the versions of ntp as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, and 7. Red Hat Product Security has rated this issue as having Moderate security impact. A future update may address this issue in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7. For additional information, refer to the Issue Severity Classification: https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/.
Mitigation
Do not use NTP's broadcast mode by not configuring the "broadcast" directive in the ntp.conf file.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v2 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 5.8 | 5 | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Network | Network | N/A |
| Access Complexity | Medium | Low | N/A |
| Authentication | None | None | N/A |
| Confidentiality Impact | None | None | N/A |
| Integrity Impact | Partial | None | N/A |
| Availability Impact | Partial | Partial | N/A |
Vector
Red Hat: AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P
NVD: AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
An attacker could provide unexpected values and cause a program crash or arbitrary control of resource allocation, leading to excessive consumption of resources such as memory and CPU.
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Memory; Read Files or Directories
An attacker could read confidential data if they are able to control resource references.
Integrity,Confidentiality,Availability
Technical Impact: Modify Memory; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands
An attacker could use malicious input to modify data or possibly alter control flow in unexpected ways, including arbitrary command execution.
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