Bug 1266404

Summary: Memory leak / possible DoS with krb auth. [rhel 6.8.0]
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Reporter: Martin Schuppert <mschuppe>
Component: sssdAssignee: SSSD Maintainers <sssd-maint>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Namita Soman <nsoman>
Severity: urgent Docs Contact:
Priority: urgent    
Version: 6.7CC: ekeck, esalvati, grajaiya, jgalipea, jhrozek, jkurik, lslebodn, mkosek, mprpic, mzidek, pbrezina, preichl, sgoveas, sumenon, thomas.oulevey
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Security, SecurityTracking, ZStream
Target Release: 6.8   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: sssd-1.12.4-51.el6 Doc Type: Release Note
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of:
: 1267176 1268783 (view as bug list) Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-05-10 20:19:53 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 1267580, 1268783    

Description Martin Schuppert 2015-09-25 08:17:26 UTC
Description of problem:

Back port request for upstream fix at https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/ticket/2803#comment:3 to RHEL6

From there:
We believe there is a memory leak in the sssd_pac_plugin (sssd_pac_plugin.so library) distributed with the sssd_client package. 

The issue was revealed in one of our daemons using kerberos 5 authentication and leaking gigabytes of memory after several days (1GB/day on average for 10 authentications per second). Putting it in valgrind, we found the following :

==27734== 1,344 (+1,344) (32 (+32) direct, 1,312 (+1,312) indirect) bytes in 1 (+1) blocks are definitely lost in loss record 484 of 540
==27734==    at 0x4A06A2E: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:270)
==27734==    by 0x50D96C2: krb5_pac_init (pac.c:231)
==27734==    by 0x50D9D2D: krb5_pac_parse (pac.c:332)
==27734==    by 0x19C70CA6: sssdpac_verify (sssd_pac.c:144)
==27734==    by 0x50C1E52: krb5int_authdata_verify (authdata.c:617)
==27734==    by 0x50E19CF: rd_req_decoded_opt (rd_req_dec.c:437)
==27734==    by 0x50E1A59: krb5_rd_req_decoded (rd_req_dec.c:599)
==27734==    by 0x50E0A88: krb5_rd_req (rd_req.c:87)
==27734==    by 0x4E49770: kg_accept_krb5 (accept_sec_context.c:643)
==27734==    by 0x4E4B0A9: krb5_gss_accept_sec_context_ext (accept_sec_context.c:1338)
==27734==    by 0x4E4B208: krb5_gss_accept_sec_context (accept_sec_context.c:1367)
==27734==    by 0x4E3AC22: gss_accept_sec_context (g_accept_sec_context.c:203)
==27734==    by 0x19A6C728: Csec_server_establish_context_ext_KRB5 (Csec_plugin_GSS.c:482)
==27734==    by 0x834EBC2: Csec_server_establish_context_ext_caller (Csec_plugin.h:129)
==27734==    by 0x835416A: Csec_server_establish_context_ext (Csec_api.c:277)
==27734==    by 0x8353FE4: Csec_server_establishContext (Csec_api.c:218)
==27734==    by 0x406407: doit (Cns_main.c:747)
==27734==    by 0x8129420: _Cpool_starter (Cpool.c:377)
==27734==    by 0x8124914: _Cthread_start_pthread (Cthread.c:209)
==27734==    by 0x30CCA07A50: start_thread (pthread_create.c:301)
==27734==    by 0x30CC6E89AC: clone (clone.S:115)

The study of the corresponding code clearly shows a genuine bug introduced in sssd_client via commit 92af6f25 in May 2013. Here are the details :

    in krb5int_authdata_verify (authdata.c:617), so krb5 code, the plugin is called :

       code = (*module->ftable->verify)(kcontext,
                                        context,
                                        module->plugin_context,
                                        *(module->request_context_pp),
                                        auth_context,
                                        key,
                                        ap_req);

    this calls sssdpac_verify (sssd_pac.c:144) and the code looks like this (I've dropped irrelevant lines and commented) :

         krb5_pac pac;   // krb5_pac is actually a pointer type
         ...
         kerr = krb5_pac_parse(kcontext, sssdctx->data.data,    // allocation of the pac pointer from input data
                               sssdctx->data.length, &pac);
         ...
         kerr = krb5_pac_verify(kcontext, pac,                  // verification of the pac content
                                req->ticket->enc_part2->times.authtime,
                                req->ticket->enc_part2->client, key, NULL);
         ...           // no reference to pac
         return 0;     // memory leak!

    I did check the code of parse and verify, and they are doing what you expect, so no hidden ref count or anything special. 

So according to all this, the patch to the leak is the following :

diff --git a/src/sss_client/sssd_pac.c b/src/sss_client/sssd_pac.c
index 1939f61..1d1fe8a 100644
--- a/src/sss_client/sssd_pac.c
+++ b/src/sss_client/sssd_pac.c
@@ -150,6 +150,10 @@ static krb5_error_code sssdpac_verify(krb5_context kcontext,
     kerr = krb5_pac_verify(kcontext, pac,
                            req->ticket->enc_part2->times.authtime,
                            req->ticket->enc_part2->client, key, NULL);
+    // deallocate pac - fixes memory leak reported in bug ...
+    krb5_pac_free(kcontext, pac);
+    pac = NULL;
+    // check result of the verification
     if (kerr != 0) {
         /* The krb5 documentation says:
          * A checksum mismatch can occur if the PAC was copied from a


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

This has been found on a machine running the following versions of kerberos and sssd :

  krb5-workstation-1.10.3-33.el6.x86_64
  krb5-libs-1.10.3-33.el6.i686
  krb5-libs-1.10.3-33.el6.x86_64
  sssd-client-1.12.4-47.el6.x86_64

Comment 2 Jakub Hrozek 2015-09-25 08:22:42 UTC
Upstream ticket:
https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/ticket/2803

Comment 3 Jakub Hrozek 2015-09-25 08:24:08 UTC
Upstream ticket:
https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/ticket/2803

Comment 4 Jakub Hrozek 2015-09-25 08:26:51 UTC
Marking as POST since the problem is already fixed in upstream with a patch kindly provided by Thomas Oulevey. The commit hash is b4c44ebb8997d3debb33607c123ccfd9926e0cba

Comment 13 Martin Prpič 2015-10-20 11:19:18 UTC
*** Bug 1272051 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15 Sudhir Menon 2016-03-09 10:57:35 UTC
Verified using 
RHEL7.2 ipa-server-4.2.0-15.el7_2.3.x86_64
RHEL6.8 
ipa-client-3.0.0-50.el6.x86_64
sssd-client-1.13.3-17.el6.x86_64
krb5-libs-1.10.3-56.el6.x86_64
krb5-workstation-1.10.3-56.el6.x86_64

==On IPA Client===
[root@r683 ~]# ssh  -K -l aduser1 `hostname`
Last login: Wed Mar  9 16:24:02 2016 from r683.dhcp20797.in
-sh-4.1$ id
uid=760201642(aduser1) gid=760201642(aduser1) groups=760201642(aduser1),760200513(domain users),760201640(adgroup1),760201641(adgroup2) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023

Comment 17 errata-xmlrpc 2016-05-10 20:19:53 UTC
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2016-0782.html