[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: krb5 review



Le vendredi 23 mai 2025, 22:42:56 heure d’été d’Europe centrale Bastien 
Roucaries a écrit :
> Le vendredi 23 mai 2025, 21:34:26 heure d’été d’Europe centrale Roberto C.
> 
> Sánchez a écrit :
> > On Fri, May 23, 2025 at 02:20:15PM +0200, Bastien Roucaries wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > Can someone test and review krb5.
> > > 
> > > I have done some test but idea are welcome.
> > 
> > Hi Bastien,
> > 
> > I have reviewed the patch for CVE-2025-3576 as you have backported it to
> > bullseye. The patch itself looks good, and it appears that only minimal
> > adaptations were required. However, I have many questions concerning the
> > suitability of this change for LTS.
> > 
> > I read the entire article by Tervoort, "Kerberos’ RC4-HMAC broken in
> > practice: spoofing PACs with MD5 collisions".
> > 
> > Based on having looked at the changes, reading about the mechanics of
> > the exploit itself, and also the practical experience of Microsoft in
> > dealing with this issue within their ecosystem, I am of the opinion that
> > this might best be left unfixed.
> > 
> > My rationale includes:
> > - the impracticality of the attack itself
> > - the very limited impact that can be achieved even if successfully
> > 
> >   exploited
> > 
> > - the availability of a workaround
> > - the possibility of fairly disruptive problems
> > 
> > The impracticality and limited impact are not necessarily good
> > justifications (on their own or even together) for not fixing this
> > particular vulnerability, since over time bad actors could make the
> > attack more practical and could discover ways to achieve more malicious
> > effects. However, those two points do indicate that we have time to
> > consider a thoughtful approach to this.
> > 
> > If I read the article correctly, then a workaround does in fact exist
> > today: a concerned administrator could simply configure a KDC to not
> > make use of RC4 and MD5 for issuing tickets and to reject requests
> > involving those same algorithms. For example, an administrator could
> > configure the libdefaults configuration variable 'permitted_enctypes' to
> > only include the AES types, which effectively defeats this attack.
> > 
> > The author also linked to a news article describing some issues that
> > Microsoft experienced related to the deployment of their mitigation for
> > this CVE. This is notable because the Microsoft ecosystem is mostly
> > closed, and Microsoft themselves exercise substantial influence over
> > many facets of the systems that run their software. In the case of MIT
> > Kerberos on Debian, we are not in such a position. This seems to me a
> > reason to think that we face an even greater possibility of some sort of
> > disruptive problem affecting users.
> > 
> > Now, I don't think that all of that necessarily precludes deploying the
> > fix for this CVE. However, I think it does require that it be done with
> > great care. Because of the way that the fix is implemented upstream
> > (default/forced disablement of certain ciphers, which can only be undone
> > by explicitly setting a particular configuration value), this is not the
> > sort of thing that we can consider for bullseye until it is in bookworm.
> > To me, that specifically requires that the krb5 maintainers be in
> > agreement with fixing this in bookworm and then landing the fix in
> > bookworm first (since that it is already in unstable and trixie). Once
> > that happens, then we can consider landing the fix in bullseye and
> > older. Have you communicated with the maintainers of krb5 to know how
> > they feel about fixing this in bookworm?
> 
> Bookworm was fixed by PU
> 
> > Additionally, we need to consider whether (for the sake of
> > compatibility) we should implement the fix but with the added change of
> > treating the two new configuration values (allow_des3 and allow_rc4) as
> > defaulting to 'true' rather than 'false'. I'm not entirely certain about
> > the suitability of this (so a robust discussion is definitely required
> > with a good representation of opinions), but the advantage of this is
> > that while it leaves the default behavior as it currently is (i.e.,
> > allows the now deprecated algorithms), it provides a simpler/easier way
> > for administrators to opt-out: by setting the new configuration
> > variables to 'false'.
> 
> Agreed with this
> 
> > This has the further advantage that administrators
> > who choose not to do this (i.e., leave the default of 'true' for
> > accepting these algorithms) end up getting opted-in during a subsequent
> > upgrade to a newer krb5, and administrators who choose to do this
> > (i..e., change the behavior to 'false' for rejecting these algorithms)
> > are protected now and continue to be protected after upgrading.
> > Naturally, this needs to be weighed against what other distros have done
> > or plan to do. The information I could find (for RedHat and Ubuntu)
> > indicates that neither of them have taken any action yet on this
> > vulnerability. And, of course, the agreement of the krb5 maintainers
> > would be just as important for going this route, as the fix would still
> > need to land in bookworm first of all.
> > 
> > If for some reason making any sort of change ends up not being feasible,
> > then another possible avenue is to make the recommendation to update the
> > configuration via a NEWS entry. This entry could be staged in
> > debian/NEWS on the branches for bookworm, bullseye, etc., and then
> > whenever the next fix is made that requires a DSA or DLA, that NEWS
> > update would be included.
> 
> Already done
> 
> But will prefer to put default to false <= bulleyes
> 
> > So, if you still think that this worth tackling then I recommend
> > contacting the maintainers and starting the conversation with them.

I have changed the default to no and updated changelog and NEWS

Could you check the language ?

Thanks

> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > -Roberto

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.


Reply to: