CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2019-14861 — Samba Samba security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.3

All Samba versions 4.x.x before 4.9.17, 4.10.x before 4.10.11 and 4.11.x before 4.11.3 have an issue, where the (poorly named) dnsserver RPC pipe provides administrative facilities to modify DNS records and zones. Samba, when acting as an AD DC, stores DNS records in LDAP. In AD, the default permissions on the DNS partition allow creation of new records by authenticated users. This is used for example to allow machines to self-register in DNS. If a DNS record was created that case-insensitively matched the name of the zone, the ldb_qsort() and dns_name_compare() routines could be confused into reading memory prior to the list of DNS entries when responding to DnssrvEnumRecords() or DnssrvEnumRecords2() and so following invalid memory as a pointer.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.3 (3.1)
Published
2019-12-10
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-276

Affected products

  • samba / samba
  • fedoraproject / fedora / 30
  • fedoraproject / fedora / 31
  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 14.04
  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 16.04
  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 18.04

Showing 6 representative product identities from 12 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

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Check exposure

  • Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
  • Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
  • Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
  • Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
  • Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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