Re: Potential issue in NTP -A option

[cve-assign () mitre org]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

> the documentation seems to conflict slightly

We do not feel that a CVE is required; however, Harlan can choose to
have a CVE ID if the undocumented risky behavior is going to be
announced as a vulnerability.

More specifically, it appears that mode 7 itself is, in some sense,
deprecated (e.g., "mode7 ... Enables processing of NTP mode 7
implementation-specific requests which are used by the deprecated
ntpdc program" on the
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/miscopt.html page and
"functionally deprecating ntpdc" on the
http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Main/SoftwareDownloads page). If so,
then we do not feel that there is a requirement for the documentation
to precisely specify the effect of a command-line option on a
deprecated feature. The -A documentation doesn't directly make a false
statement about authentication within mode 7; it simply does not
discuss mode 7.

If mode 7 itself isn't deprecated, and there is a supported use case
in which the user may choose to enable both mode 7 and the -A option,
then announcing the behavior/documentation mismatch as a vulnerability
is probably more useful.

- -- 
CVE assignment team, MITRE CVE Numbering Authority
M/S M300
202 Burlington Road, Bedford, MA 01730 USA
[ PGP key available through http://cve.mitre.org/cve/request_id.html ]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.14 (SunOS)

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVVOBzAAoJEKllVAevmvmsy4oH/REWyDXtOBOoJL5lYtj6zroV
DATBhEgJTGSK7m7zc5Z1sqGGEGXNthghS8VGysc4T1vbkgKVO0hpATMzHdZb6L6R
rNGggnTpHxoubpKRt+flURxCBzMta0w9brQb2vXxUvh4RYy+6MklDqGQofQA3ELB
9rZW6wkMK3KYms00HJGrGkIutxcVe+1/1At6htLGlQo3wEuY5ORHdlxmUxHaXBos
99fyRa1rR8ZzrN1EKWgh62WUhetvauqASFlYXdhNcqUgySlzIfMrAlFpLUyvTIGn
TjTYgf+XAvlQLmnPjKV48IeY/g2BE8MHO61loTCX5fBeYMT3lzyl2PVDx6sIN9s=
=MpGY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----