NTP BUG 3384: Privileged execution of User Library code (WINDOWS PPSAPI ONLY)

Last update: June 27, 2022 20:45 UTC (51d68a4aa)


Summary

Resolved 4.2.8p10 21 Mar 2017
References Bug 3384 CVE-2017-6455
Affects All Windows versions of ntp-4 that use the PPSAPI, up to but not including
ntp-4.2.8p10, and ntp-4.3.0 up to, but not including ntp-4.3.94.
Resolved in 4.2.8p10.
CVSS2 Score MED 3.8 AV:L/AC:H/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C
CVSS3 Score MED 4.0 CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Description

The Windows NT port has the added capability to preload DLLs defined in the inherited global local environment variable PPSAPI_DLLS. The code contained within those libraries is then called from the NTPD service, usually running with elevated privileges. Depending on how securely the machine is setup and configured, if ntpd is configured to use the PPSAPI under Windows this can easily lead to a code injection.


Mitigation


Credit

This weakness was discovered by Cure53.


Timeline