Bug 174876

Summary: libkrb5.so from mit-krb5 1.4.1 frees invalid ccache
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Fredrik Tolf <fredrik>
Component: krb5Assignee: Nalin Dahyabhai <nalin>
Status: CLOSED INSUFFICIENT_DATA QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 4   
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OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2008-03-10 01:15:53 UTC Type: ---
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Patch to fix the bug none

Description Fredrik Tolf 2005-12-03 04:02:30 UTC
There is a bug in the FILE ccache implementation of MIT Kerberos 5 1.4.1 that
frees the wrong ccache every now and then. Especially in ksu, this behavior is
reproducable every time.

The bug is in the dereference() function in src/lib/krb5/ccache/cc_file.c, where
there is a line like this:
    for (fccsp = &fccs; *fccsp == NULL; fccsp = &(*fccsp)->next)

Obviously, the loop condition is not supposed to be "*fccsp == NULL", but rather
"*fccsp != NULL". This bug causes a lot of trouble:
 1. When using ksu, the target cc is freed when the source cc is supposed to be
freed, which causes two subissues:
  a. No target cc's are unlinked when ksu exits, which means that cc's will keep
piling up in /tmp.
  b. The source cc will remain open in ksu and its child processes, quite
possibly read locked, which means that any process trying to write lock the cc
(for example when requesting a new ticket) will sleep until ksu exits. This is
also an information leak, since ksu's child processes will have access to the
source cc.
 2. It obviously causes a high probability of programs using more than one fcc
at a time crashing. For example, when patching screen for Kerberos cc
duplication (<http://www.dolda2000.com/~fredrik/patches/>), screen will crash
periodically.
 3. It might be a security risk, since ksu is suid root (and maybe certain
network servers will be affected as well), and its memory is being corrupted. I
don't know if it's exploitable, but there's nothing that says it isn't, either.

FC should either patch this bug or update to a later version of Kerberos (the
bug is fixed in 1.4.3, I don't know about 1.4.2).

Comment 1 Fredrik Tolf 2005-12-03 04:04:15 UTC
Created attachment 121793 [details]
Patch to fix the bug

This patch fixes the bug. If there are no plans to upgrade Kerberos from 1.4.1
in a near future, at least a new release of 1.4.1 should be made with this
patch applied.

Apply with -p1 in the src directory.

Comment 2 Christian Iseli 2007-01-20 00:27:44 UTC
This report targets the FC3 or FC4 products, which have now been EOL'd.

Could you please check that it still applies to a current Fedora release, and
either update the target product or close it ?

Thanks.

Comment 3 petrosyan 2008-03-10 01:15:53 UTC
Fedora Core 4 is no longer maintained.

Setting status to "INSUFFICIENT_DATA". If you can reproduce this bug in the
current Fedora release, please reopen this bug and assign it to the
corresponding Fedora version.