CVE-2025-7493
Description
A privilege escalation flaw from host to domain administrator was found in FreeIPA. This vulnerability is similar to CVE-2025-4404, where it fails to validate the uniqueness of the krbCanonicalName. While the previously released version added validations for the admin@REALM credential, FreeIPA still does not validate the root@REALM canonical name, which can also be used as the realm administrator's name. This flaw allows an attacker to perform administrative tasks over the REALM, leading to access to sensitive data and sensitive data exfiltration.
Statement
This vulnerability is marked as Important rather than a Moderate because it allows a local or authenticated attacker to escalate privileges from host-level to full domain-level administrative access within a FreeIPA-managed environment. By exploiting the lack of uniqueness enforcement on the krbCanonicalName attribute, an attacker can craft a principal with the same canonical name as the domain admin, for example, root@REALM, and obtain a Kerberos service ticket. This results in the impersonation of the admin identity, granting unrestricted access to sensitive systems and data. Since Kerberos-based authentication is trusted across the domain, this breach compromises the entire security boundary of the realm, allowing administrative tasks like user management, policy manipulation, and credential extraction.
Mitigation
There's no available mitigation other than updating to the package version.
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 v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 9.1 | N/A | 9.1 |
| Attack Vector | Network | N/A | Network |
| Attack Complexity | Low | N/A | Low |
| Privileges Required | High | N/A | High |
| User Interaction | None | N/A | None |
| Scope | Changed | N/A | Changed |
| Confidentiality | High | N/A | High |
| Integrity Impact | High | N/A | High |
| Availability Impact | High | N/A | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Confidentiality,Integrity,Availability,Access Control
Technical Impact: Modify Memory; Read Memory; Execute Unauthorized Code or Commands; Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Bypass Protection Mechanism; Other
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Tom Smith for reporting this issue.
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