[CAN-2005-1063] Administration protocol abuse leads to Service and System Denial of Service
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Secure Computer Group - University of A Coruna
http://research.tic.udc.es/scg/
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dotpi.com Information Technologies Research Labs
http://www.dotpi.com
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ID: #20050429-2
Document title: Administration protocol abuse leads to
Service and System Denial of Service
Document revision: 1.0
Coordinated release date: 2005/04/29
Vendor Acknowledge date: 2005/02/25
Reported date: 2005/02/21
CVE Name: CAN-2005-1063
Other references: N/A
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Summary:
Impact: Service denial of service (DoS)
CPU hogging denial of service (DoS)
Rating/Severity: Medium
Recommendation: Update to latest version
Enforce network ACLs
Vendor: Kerio Technologies Inc.
Affected software:
o Kerio WinRoute Firewall up to and including 6.0.10
o Kerio Personal Firewall up to and including 4.1.2
o Kerio MailServer up to and including 6.0.8
Updates/Patches: Yes (see below)
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General Information:
1. Executive summary:
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Kerio WinRoute Firewall, Kerio Personal Firewall and Kerio
MailServer drive a local/remote administration protocol in order
to manage the service.
This protocol can be abused in pre-authentication states forcing
the service to compute unexpected conditions and also to perform
cryptographic operations over each protocol message.
As a result, system resources get exhausted and the system
becomes unresponsive. A sufficient network bandwidth between the
system and the attacker is required for the attack.
It must be noted that the limit of maximun number of user
connections can also be used to perform a service denial of
service and that no valid authentication is required for this to
succeed.
The logging component of the software ignores any event related
with this attack.
In order solve this problem, system administrators should enforce
network ACL security settings. It is also highly recommended to
verify this settings as part of the planning, installation,
hardening and auditing processes.
New versions of the software solve this and other minor problems
so an upgrade is highly recommended.
2. Technical details:
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Technical details and proof of concept code were provided to
vendor.
3. Risk Assessment factors:
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The attacker should have access to the administration ports:
o TCP/UDP 44333 - Kerio WinRoute Firewall Administration
o TCP/UDP 44334 - Kerio Personal Firewall Administration
o TCP/UDP 44337 - Kerio MailServer Administration
The most risky scenarios are the ones in which the server machine
is shared among two or more interactive users/administrators or
those situations where Kerio service management have been
delegated to a third party.
Special care should be taken on such environments and every step
of the project: design, planning, deployment and management
should consider this security issues.
4. Solutions and recommendations:
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Upgrade to the latest versions:
o Kerio Winroute Firewall 6.0.11 and above
o Kerio Personal Firewall 4.1.3 and above
o Kerio MailServer 6.0.9 and above
As in any other case, follow, as much as possible, the Industry
'Best Practices' on Planning, Deployment and Operation on this
kind of services.
5. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project:
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The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has
assigned the name CAN-2005-1063 to this issue. This is a
candidate for inclusion in the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org),
which standardizes names for security problems.
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Acknowledgements:
1. Special thanks to Vladimir Toncar and the whole Technical Team from
Kerio Technologies (support at kerio.com) for their quick response
and professional handling on this issue.
3. The whole Research Lab at dotpi.com and specially to Carlos Veira.
3. Secure Computer Group at University of A Coruna (scg at udc.es),
and specially to Antonino Santos del Riego.
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Credits:
Javier Munoz (Secure Computer Group) is credited with this discovery.
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Related Links:
[1] Kerio Technologies Inc.
http://www.kerio.com/
[2] Kerio WinRoute Firewall Downloads & Updates
http://www.kerio.com/kwf_download.html
[3] Kerio Personal Firewall Downloads & Updates
http://www.kerio.com/kpf_download.html
[4] Kerio MailServer Downloads & Updates
http://www.kerio.com/kms_download.html
[5] Secure Computer Group. University of A Coruna
http://research.tic.udc.es/scg/
[6] Secure Computer Group. Updated advisory
http://research.tic.udc.es/scg/advisories/20050429-2.txt
[7] dotpi.com Information Technologies S.L.
http://www.dotpi.com/
[8] dotpi.com Research Labs
http://www.dotpi.com/research/
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Copyright (c) 2004-2005 dotpi.com Information Technologies S.L.
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