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Critical BIND Bug - CVE-2015-5477

posted by janrinok on Thursday July 30 2015, @02:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the patch-now dept.

janrinok writes with news of a report (by Michael McNally) concerning a critical defect in BIND:

https://www.isc.org/blogs/about-cve-2015-5477-an-error-in-handling-tkey-queries-can-cause-named-to-exit-with-a-require-assertion-failure/

As the security incident manager for this particular vulnerability notification, I'd like to say a little extra, beyond our official vulnerability disclosure about this critical defect in BIND [Wikipedia].

Many of our bugs are limited in scope or affect only users having a particular set of configuration choices. CVE-2015-5477 does not fall into that category. Almost all unpatched BIND servers are potentially vulnerable. We know of no configuration workarounds. Screening the offending packets with firewalls is likely to be difficult or impossible unless those devices understand DNS at a protocol level and may be problematic even then. And the fix for this defect is very localized to one specific area of the BIND code.

The practical effect of this is that this bug is difficult to defend against (except by patching, which is completely effective) and will not be particularly difficult to reverse-engineer. I have already been told by one expert that they have successfully reverse-engineered an attack kit from what has been divulged and from analyzing the code changes, and while I have complete confidence that the individual who told me this is not intending to use his kit in a malicious manner, there are others who will do so who may not be far behind. Please take steps to patch or download a secure version immediately.

This bug is designated "Critical" and it deserves that designation.

The existence of this bug was announced 'in-house' on 28 July but is announced publicly today. Apologies for releasing my own story [submission].

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by zocalo on Thursday July 30 2015, @05:19PM

    by zocalo (302) on Thursday July 30 2015, @05:19PM (#215941)
    Absolutely. There are alternatives, but most of them are either tied to a specific OS and/or lack some of the features and scalability necessary for some higher end usage case scenarios - albeit not ones that are likely to crop up in your typical SME. In the enterprise and ISPs where BIND is more often found there's also a lot of inertia from deployments that go back through several major revisions of BIND and noone has taken the time even investigate whether it's worth trying to migrate to an alternative platform. When you've got dozens of servers scattered across the globe and it just works (BIND is nowhere near as bad as it used to be for bugs), there's not a great deal of incentive to do much more than upgrade.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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