First published: Fri Dec 19 2014(Updated: )
As per upstream NTP security advisory: If no 'auth' key is set in the configuration file, ntpd would generate a random key on the fly. There were two problems with this: 1) the generated key was 31 bits in size, and 2) it used the (now weak) ntp_random() function, which was seeded with a 32-bit value and could only provide 32 bits of entropy. This was sufficient back in the late 1990s when the code was written. Not today. Mitigation: Upgrade to 4.2.7p11 or later. This vulnerability was noticed in ntp-4.2.6 by Neel Mehta of the Google Security Team.
Credit: cve@mitre.org
Affected Software | Affected Version | How to fix |
---|---|---|
NTP ntp | <=4.2.7 | |
redhat/ntp | <4.2.8 | 4.2.8 |
Sign up to SecAlerts for real-time vulnerability data matched to your software, aggregated from hundreds of sources.
The severity of CVE-2014-9293 has been categorized as high due to the potential for attackers to exploit weak random keys.
To fix CVE-2014-9293, upgrade your NTP software to version 4.2.8 or later.
CVE-2014-9293 affects NTP versions up to 4.2.7 across various platforms.
If CVE-2014-9293 is not addressed, unauthorized users may have an increased risk of intercepting and spoofing NTP traffic.
CVE-2014-9293 is caused by NTP's weak random key generation when no authentication keys are configured.