MGASA-2016-0039

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    MGASA-2016-0039

    Published: 29 Jan 2016Last Modified: 16 Apr 2026

    Summary: Updated ntp packages fix security vulnerability

    Details: In ntpd before 4.2.8p6, when used with symmetric key encryption, the client would accept packets encrypted with keys for any configured server, allowing a server to impersonate other servers to clients, thus performing a man-in-the-middle attack. A server can be attacked by a client in a similar manner (CVE-2015-7974). A NULL pointer dereference flaw was found in the way ntpd processed 'ntpdc reslist' commands that queried restriction lists with a large amount of entries. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash the ntpd process (CVE-2015-7977). A stack-based buffer overflow was found in the way ntpd processed 'ntpdc reslist' commands that queried restriction lists with a large amount of entries. A remote attacker could use this flaw to crash the ntpd process (CVE-2015-7978). It was found that when NTP is configured in broadcast mode, an off-path attacker could broadcast packets with bad authentication (wrong key, mismatched key, incorrect MAC, etc) to all clients. The clients, upon receiving the malformed packets, would break the association with the broadcast server. This could cause the time on affected clients to become out of sync over a longer period of time (CVE-2015-7979). A faulty protection against spoofing and replay attacks allows an attacker to disrupt synchronization with kiss-of-death packets, take full control of the clock, or cause ntpd to crash (CVE-2015-8138). A flaw was found in the way the ntpq client certain processed incoming packets in a loop in the getresponse() function. A remote attacker could potentially use this flaw to crash an ntpq client instance (CVE-2015-8158). The ntp package has been patched to fix these issues and a few other bugs. Note that there are still some unfixed issues. Two of those issues, CVE-2015-8139 and CVE-2015-8140, are vulnerabilities to spoofing and replay attacks that can be mitigated by either adding the noquery option to all restrict entries in ntp.conf, configuring ntpd to get time from multiple sources, or using a restriction list to limit who is allowed to issue ntpq and ntpdc queries. Additionally, the other unfixed issues can also be mitigated. CVE-2015-7973, a replay attack issue, can be mitigated by not using broadcast mode, and CVE-2015-7976, a bug that can cause globbing issues on the server, can be mitigated by restricting use of the "saveconfig" command with the "restrict nomodify" directive.

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: ntp

    Purl: pkg:rpm/mageia/ntp?arch=source&distro=mageia-5

    Affected ranges

    Type: ECOSYSTEM

    Events:

    Introduced- 0
    Fixed -4.2.6p5-24.4.mga5

    Affected versions

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High
    MGASA-2016-0039 | CVE-DB