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SuSE Security Announcement
Package: xntp
Announcement-ID: SuSE-SA:2001:10
Date: Monday, April 9th 22:30 MEST
Affected SuSE versions: (6.0, 6.1, 6.2), 6.3, 6.4, 7.0, 7.1
Vulnerability Type: remote root compromise
Severity (1-10): 8
SuSE default package: no
Other affected systems: systems using xntp in newer versions
Content of this advisory:
1) security vulnerability resolved: xntp
problem description, discussion, solution and upgrade information
2) pending vulnerabilities, solutions, workarounds
3) standard appendix (further information)
______________________________________________________________________________
1) problem description, brief discussion, solution, upgrade information
xntp is the network time protocol package widely used with many unix
and linux systems for system time synchronization over a network.
An exploit published by Przemyslaw Frasunek demonstrates a buffer
overflow in the control request parsing code. The exploit allows a
remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands as root. All versions as
shipped with SuSE Linux are affected by the buffer overflow problem.
A temporary workaround is to kill the daemon and to set the variable
START_XNTPD in the file /etc/rc.config to "no" so that the daemon
will not be started again upon reboot of the system. Correct the system
time manually if necessary or adjust the time by running ntpdate from
a cron job on a regular basis.
We believe that this problem is generally underestimated since the
xntpd daemon tends to get forgotten over the years of a system's life-
time once installed and configured. The xntpd daemon is not started by
default in SuSE Linux distributions. We strongly recommend to immediately
update the xntp package on each system where the daemon is installed,
configured and running.
Note:
The xntp update packages for most distributions have been available
for download since Friday last week. The packages for all 6.4 and 7.0
version distributions had to be rebuilt due to a specfile bug that
did not show up earlier and that caused a delay in building packages.
This bug causes the rpm subsystem to complain about the release number
of the package. Now that this bug is corrected, you might find yourself
having installed a package where there is a newer version of the package
on the ftp server. However, regardless of the package release number,
all published packages fix the currently known security problems in the
xntpd network time daemon.
Note:
The source rpm of xntp in newer distributions generates two packages:
xntp.rpm and xntpdoc.rpm. It is not necessary to update the xntpdoc
package which is why we do not provide the update packages on our ftp
server. The xntpdoc package only contains the documentation for the
xntp package and did not change in this updated package.
Download the update package from locations desribed below and install
the package with the command `rpm -Uhv file.rpm'. The md5sum for each
file is in the line below. You can verify the integrity of the rpm
files using the command
`rpm --checksig --nogpg file.rpm',
independently from the md5 signatures below.
SPECIAL INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS:
==============================
The xntpd daemon must be restarted for the new package to become
active after the installation of the update rpm. You can do this
by running the command
kill -15 `pidof xntpd`
as root. After performing the upgrade using the rpm command above,
you can restart the xntpd:
rcxntpd start
You should now see the new daemon synchronizing in your syslogs,
depending on where you configured the daemon to write its logs to.
i386 Intel Platform:
SuSE-7.1
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.1/n2/xntp-4.0.99f-34.i386.rpm
9e39ca8f7b01fef22766463b8295e25d
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.1/zq1/xntp-4.0.99f-34.src.rpm
dfa51b46c92b917353f52e5d83863478
SuSE-7.0
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.0/n1/xntp-4.0.99f-37.i386.rpm
4293ad8a3e084ec5d773bbcab8380c08
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.0/zq1/xntp-4.0.99f-37.src.rpm
745b894dcb6a97caa36f97858a51e279
SuSE-6.4
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.4/n1/xntp-4.0.99f-38.i386.rpm
8001ac19d0ee812be82b6b066b4313d5
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.4/zq1/xntp-4.0.99f-38.src.rpm
7d56618cba3d768aa53246f39158987d
SuSE-6.3
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.3/n1/xntp-4.0.98d-1.i386.rpm
2f5d7b43b167c6acf13f68b13b1b7989
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.3/zq1/xntp-4.0.98d-1.src.rpm
11182e5e8c3769e6f9498ade9fcbe1fc
SuSE-6.2 (unsupported platform)
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.2/n1/xntp-4.0.93a-18.i386.rpm
5b55d179e3d4a0c57513bed03013c1a9
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.2/zq1/xntp-4.0.93a-18.src.rpm
dbb7c833ddc25b0bde406b4319d4106f
SuSE-6.1 (unsupported platform)
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.1/n1/xntp-4.0.92c-1.i386.rpm
baa93b55a4eaa486968fa6285f04c865
source rpm:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.1/zq1/xntp-4.0.92c-1.src.rpm
06f0174e8934e3ce6f419284564a7c91
Sparc Platform:
SuSE-7.1
The xntp packages for the SuSE-7.1 sparc distribution are currently
pending for being built. They will be available on the ftp server
as soon as they are built. The packages are gpg-signed using the key