MIT Kerberos 5: Arbitrary Remote Code Execution

Background

MIT Kerberos 5 is a suite of applications that implement the Kerberos network protocol.

Description

The Kerberos administration daemon, and possibly other applications using the GSS-API or RPC libraries, could potentially call a function pointer in a freed heap buffer, or attempt to free an uninitialized pointer.

Impact

A remote attacker may be able to crash an affected application, or potentially execute arbitrary code with root privileges.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All MIT Kerberos 5 users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-crypt/mit-krb5-1.5.2"