[CAN-2005-1062] Administration protocol abuse allows local/remote password cracking
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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: #20050429-1
Document title: Administration protocol abuse allows
local/remote password cracking
Document revision: 1.0
Coordinated release date: 2005/04/29
Vendor Acknowledge date: 2005/02/25
Reported date: 2005/02/21
CVE Name: CAN-2005-1062
Other references: N/A
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Summary:
Impact: Local/remote password cracking
Rating/Severity: Medium
Recommendation: Update to latest version
Enforce network ACLs
Enforce password policies
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 order to remotely retrieve user
credentials through a brute forcing technique. Passwords 1-5
characters long could be obtained quickly. As such, Kerio considers
them insecure and recommends enforcing password policies. The
attack is not practically usable for passwords longer than 5
characters. User logins must be previously known for this attack to
be successful.
The logging component of the software can loose up to 40% of the
events when the attack is in place.
In order solve this problem, system administrators should enforce
network ACL security settings and user password policies. 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:
------------------
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
Network effective bandwidth between the system and the attacker is
also an important speed and success factor.
User logins must be previously known or previously brute forced
for this attack to be successful.
Special attention should be taken on environments on which NT,
Active Directory or Open Directory integration is in place.
GINA.DLL re-login delay features are bypassed and therefore the
brute forcing procedure is considerably quicker.
Local/Domain User Lock-out policies can help on contenting this
attack. Despite that, an user login denial of service can emerge
as a side effect.
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.
The weakeness on the logging facility can be a target on its own
in order to hide any other attack that is being performed
simultaneously.
Special care should be taken on such environments and every step
of the project: design, planning, deployment and management
should consider this security issues.
Privilege escalation, system and software tampering and the
ability to alter service configuration are all real issues and
all of them can be used as a second stage attack vector.
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:
---------------------------------------------------
The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has
assigned the name CAN-2005-1062 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/20050429-1.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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