faraphel/chrony
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

ntp: restrict authentication of server/peer to specified key

Browse source 
When a server/peer was specified with a key number to enable
authentication with a symmetric key, packets received from the
server/peer were accepted if they were authenticated with any of
the keys contained in the key file and not just the specified key.

This allowed an attacker who knew one key of a client/peer to modify
packets from its servers/peers that were authenticated with other
keys in a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. For example, in a network
where each NTP association had a separate key and all hosts had only
keys they needed, a client of a server could not attack other clients
of the server, but it could attack the server and also attack its own
clients (i.e. modify packets from other servers).

To not allow the server/peer to be authenticated with other keys
extend the authentication test to check if the key ID in the received
packet is equal to the configured key number. As a consequence, it's
no longer possible to authenticate two peers to each other with two
different keys, both peers have to be configured to use the same key.

This issue was discovered by Matt Street of Cisco ASIG.
This commit is contained in:
Miroslav Lichvar 2016-01-08 15:03:09 +01:00
parent a030ed4f39
commit a78bf9725a
2 changed files with 11 additions and 6 deletions
Show stats Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

3
chrony.texi.in
View file

@ -2508,6 +2508,9 @@ The syntax of this directive is identical to that for the @code{server}
directive (@pxref{server directive}), except that it is used to specify
an NTP peer rather than an NTP server.
When a key is specified by the @code{key} option to enable authentication, both
peers must be configured to use the same key and the same key number.
Please note that NTP peers that are not configured with a key to enable
authentication are vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack. An attacker
knowing that NTP hosts A and B are peering with each other can send a packet

14
ntp_core.c
View file

@ -1099,7 +1099,7 @@ static int
receive_packet(NTP_Packet *message, struct timeval *now, double now_err, NCR_Instance inst, NTP_Local_Address *local_addr, int length)
{
int pkt_leap;
uint32_t pkt_refid;
uint32_t pkt_refid, pkt_key_id;
double pkt_root_delay;
double pkt_root_dispersion;
@ -1190,11 +1190,13 @@ receive_packet(NTP_Packet *message, struct timeval *now, double now_err, NCR_Ins
function is called only for known sources. */
/* Test 5 checks for authentication failure. If we expect authenticated info
from this peer/server and the packet doesn't have it or the authentication
is bad, it's got to fail. If the peer or server sends us an authenticated
frame, but we're not bothered about whether he authenticates or not, just
ignore the test. */
test5 = inst->do_auth ? check_packet_auth(message, length, NULL, NULL) : 1;
from this peer/server and the packet doesn't have it, the authentication
is bad, or it's authenticated with a different key than expected, it's got
to fail. If we don't expect the packet to be authenticated, just ignore
the test. */
test5 = !inst->do_auth ||
(check_packet_auth(message, length, NULL, &pkt_key_id) &&
pkt_key_id == inst->auth_key_id);
/* Test 6 checks for unsynchronised server */
test6 = pkt_leap != LEAP_Unsynchronised &&