Security Bulletin: Multiple vulnerabilities in ntp affect PowerKVM

Summary

PowerKVM is affected by several vulnerabilities in the Network Time Protocol. These vulnerabilities are now fixed.

Vulnerability Details

CVEID: CVE-2015-5300**
DESCRIPTION:** Network Time Protocol (NTP) could allow a remote attacker to bypass security restrictions, caused by the failure to correctly implement the threshold limitation for the ‘-g’ option. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability using man-in-the-middle techniques to intercept NTP traffic and make multiple steps larger than the panic threshold.
CVSS Base Score: 4.3
CVSS Temporal Score: See https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/107594 for the current score
CVSS Environmental Score*: Undefined
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N)

CVEID: CVE-2015-7704**
DESCRIPTION:** Network Time Protocol (NTP) is vulnerable to a denial of service, caused by an error in the rate-limiting mechanism. By sending spoofed Kiss-o’-Death packets, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to disable NTP at a victim client.
CVSS Base Score: 7.5
CVSS Temporal Score: See https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/107446 for the current score
CVSS Environmental Score*: Undefined
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)

CVEID: CVE-2015-7979**
DESCRIPTION:** NTP could allow a remote attacker to bypass security restrictions. By sending specially crafted broadcast packets with bad authentication, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause the target broadcast client to tear down the association with the broadcast server.
CVSS Base Score: 6.5
CVSS Temporal Score: See https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/110024 for the current score
CVSS Environmental Score*: Undefined
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L)

CVEID: CVE-2016-1547**
DESCRIPTION:** NTP is vulnerable to a denial of service, caused by the demobilization of a preemptable client association. By sending specially crafted crypto NAK packets, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause a denial of service.
CVSS Base Score: 3.7
CVSS Temporal Score: See https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/112739 for the current score
CVSS Environmental Score*: Undefined
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L)

CVEID: CVE-2016-1548**
DESCRIPTION:** NTP could allow a remote attacker to bypass security restrictions, caused by an error in the ntpd client. By changing the client from basic client/server mode to interleaved symmetric mode, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to modify the time of the client or cause a denial of service.
CVSS Base Score: 7.2
CVSS Temporal Score: See https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/112740 for the current score
CVSS Environmental Score*: Undefined
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:L)

CVEID: CVE-2016-1550**
DESCRIPTION:** NTP could allow a local attacker to bypass security restrictions, caused by the failure to use a constant-time memory comparison function when validating the authentication digest on incoming packets. By sending a specially crafted packet with an authentication payload, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to conduct a timing attack to compute the value of the valid authentication digest.
CVSS Base Score: 4
CVSS Temporal Score: See https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/112742 for the current score
CVSS Environmental Score*: Undefined
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N)

CVEID: CVE-2016-2518**
DESCRIPTION:** NTP is vulnerable to a denial of service, caused by an error when using a specially crafted packet to create a peer association with hmode > 7. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause the MATCH_ASSOC() function to trigger an out-of-bounds read.
CVSS Base Score: 2
CVSS Temporal Score: See https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/112746 for the current score
CVSS Environmental Score*: Undefined
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L)

Affected Products and Versions

PowerKVM 2.1 and PowerKVM 3.1

Remediation/Fixes

Customers can update PowerKVM systems by using “yum update”.

Fix images are made available via Fix Central. For version 3.1, see https://ibm.biz/BdHggw for 3.1.0.2 (3.1.0 SP2) or later.

For version 2.1, see PowerKVM 2.1.1.3-65. Update 10 at https://ibm.biz/BdEnT8 or later. Customers running v2.1 are, in any case, encouraged to upgrade to v3.1.

For v2.1 systems currently running fix levels of PowerKVM prior to 2.1.1, please see <http://download4.boulder.ibm.com/sar/CMA/OSA/05e4c/0/README&gt; for prerequisite fixes and instructions.

Workarounds and Mitigations

None