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Red Hat: RHSA-2013:0189-01 Important: ipa-client Man-In-The-Middle Risk

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Calendar Grey January 23, 2013
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Enhance your system by updating to the newest ipa-client version which addresses critical security vulnerabilities, ensuring your Red Hat server remains safe from potential threats.
An updated ipa-client package that fixes one security issue is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/11258

Summary

Red Hat Identity Management is a centralized authentication, identity management and authorization solution for both traditional and cloud-based enterprise environments.
A weakness was found in the way IPA clients communicated with IPA serverswhen initially attempting to join IPA domains. As there was no secure way to provide the IPA server's Certificate Authority (CA) certificate to the client during a join, the IPA client enrollment process was susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. This flaw could allow an attacker to obtain access to the IPA server using the credentials provided by an IPA client, including administrative access to the entire domain if the join was performed using an administrator's credentials. (CVE-2012-5484)
Note: This weakness was only exposed during the initial client join to the realm, because the IPA client did not yet have the CA certificate of the server. Once an IPA client has joined the realm and has obtained the CA certificate of the IPA server, all further communication is secure. If a client were using the OTP (one-time password) method to join to the realm, an attacker could only obtain unprivileged access to the server (enough to only join the realm).
Red Hat would like to thank Petr Menšík for reporting this issue.
When a fix for this flaw has been applied to the client but not yet the server, ipa-client-install, in unattended mode, will fail if you do not have the correct CA certificate locally, noting that you must use the "--force" option to insecurely obtain the certificate. In interactive mode, the certificate will try to be obtained securely from LDAP. If this fails, you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP. In the same situation when using OTP, LDAP will not be queried and you will be prompted to insecurely download the certificate via HTTP.
Users of ipa-client are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which corrects this issue.

References

https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2012-5484 https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#important

Package List

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client):
Source:
i386: ipa-client-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.i386.rpm ipa-client-debuginfo-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.i386.rpm
x86_64: ipa-client-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.x86_64.rpm ipa-client-debuginfo-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.x86_64.rpm
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server):
Source:
i386: ipa-client-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.i386.rpm ipa-client-debuginfo-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.i386.rpm
ia64: ipa-client-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.ia64.rpm ipa-client-debuginfo-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.ia64.rpm
ppc: ipa-client-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.ppc.rpm ipa-client-debuginfo-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.ppc.rpm
s390x: ipa-client-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.s390x.rpm ipa-client-debuginfo-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.s390x.rpm
x86_64: ipa-client-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.x86_64.rpm ipa-client-debuginfo-2.1.3-5.el5_9.2.x86_64.rpm
These packages are GPG signed by Red Hat for security. Our key and details on how to verify the signature are available from https://access.redhat.com/security/team/key/#package


Severity
important
Lowest
Low
Medium
High
Critical

Advisory ID: RHSA-2013:0189-01
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Issue date: 2013-01-23

Topic

An updated ipa-client package that fixes one security issue is nowavailable for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.The Red Hat Security Response Team has rated this update as havingimportant security impact. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available from theCVE link in the References section.

Relevant Releases Architectures

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 server) - i386, ia64, ppc, s390x, x86_64

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 5 client) - i386, x86_64

Bugs Fixed

876307 - CVE-2012-5484 ipa: weakness when initiating join from IPA client can potentially compromise IPA domain

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