Executive Summary

This vulnerability exists in MUNGE, an authentication service used to create and validate user credentials. Specifically, versions 0.5 to 0.5.17 of the munged daemon have a buffer overflow flaw. A local attacker can send a specially crafted message with an oversized address length field, causing a buffer overflow that corrupts munged's internal state.

This corruption allows the attacker to extract cryptographic key material (the MAC subkey) from the process memory. With this leaked key, the attacker can forge arbitrary MUNGE credentials and impersonate any user, including root, to services relying on MUNGE for authentication.

The issue is fixed in version 0.5.18.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can have serious security impacts. An attacker with local access can exploit it to leak cryptographic keys used for authentication.

By obtaining these keys, the attacker can forge credentials and impersonate any user, including privileged users like root.

This can lead to unauthorized access to systems and services that rely on MUNGE for authentication, potentially compromising system integrity, confidentiality, and availability.

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Compliance Impact

I don't know

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Detection Guidance

I don't know

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Mitigation Strategies

To mitigate this vulnerability, you should upgrade MUNGE to version 0.5.18 or later, where the buffer overflow issue in munged has been fixed.

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