CVE-2016-9042

Description

A vulnerability was found in NTP, affecting the origin timestamp check function. An attacker able to spoof messages from all of the configured peers could send crafted packets to ntpd, causing later replies from those peers to be discarded, resulting in denial of service.

Mitigation

Implement BCP-38.

Configure enough servers/peers that an attacker cannot target all of your time sources.

Properly monitor your ntpd instances, and auto-restart ntpd (without -g) if it stops running.

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).

The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score5.95.93.7
Attack VectorNetworkNetworkNetwork
Attack ComplexityHighHighHigh
Privileges RequiredNoneNoneNone
User InteractionNoneNoneNone
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedUnchanged
ConfidentialityNoneNoneNone
Integrity ImpactNoneNoneNone
Availability ImpactHighHighLow

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

cve.org: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

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.

Acknowledgements

Red Hat would like to thank the NTP project for reporting this issue. Upstream acknowledges Matthew Van Gundy (Cisco) as the original reporter.

Frequently Asked Questions

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