The Asterisk Development Team
2007-Jul-24 23:26 UTC
[asterisk-users] ASA-2007-018: Resource Exhaustion vulnerability in IAX2 channel driver
Asterisk Project Security Advisory -
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Product |
Asterisk |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Summary | Resource Exhaustion vulnerability in IAX2
channel |
| |
driver |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Nature of Advisory | Denial of
Service |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Susceptibility | Remote Unauthenticated
Sessions |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Severity |
Moderate |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Exploits Known |
No |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Reported On | July 19,
2007 |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Reported By | Russell Bryant, Digium, Inc.
<russell at digium.com> |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Posted On | July 23,
2007 |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Last Updated On | July 23,
2007 |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| Advisory Contact | Russell Bryant
<russell at digium.com> |
|--------------------+---------------------------------------------------|
| CVE Name
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Description | The IAX2 channel driver in Asterisk is vulnerable to
a |
| | Denial of Service attack when configured to
allow |
| | unauthenticated calls. An attacker can send a flood
of |
| | NEW packets for valid extensions to the server
to |
| | initiate calls as the unauthenticated user. This
will |
| | cause resources on the Asterisk system to get
allocated |
| | that will never go away. Furthermore, the IAX2
channel |
| | driver will be stuck trying to
reschedule |
| | retransmissions for each of these fake calls
for |
| | forever. This can very quickly bring down a system
and |
| | the only way to recover is to restart
Asterisk. |
|
| |
| | Detailed
Explanation: |
|
| |
| | Within the last few months, we made some changes
to |
| | chan_iax2 to combat the abuse of this module for
traffic |
| | amplification attacks. Unfortunately, this has caused
an |
| | unintended side
effect. |
|
| |
| | The summary of the change to combat
traffic |
| | amplification is this. Once you start the PBX on
the |
| | Asterisk channel, it will begin receiving frames to
be |
| | sent back out to the network. We delayed this
from |
| | happening until a 3-way handshake has occurred to
help |
| | ensure that we are talking to the IP address
the |
| | messages appear to be coming
from. |
|
| |
| | When chan_iax2 accepts an unauthenticated call,
it |
| | immediately creates the ast_channel for the
call. |
| | However, since the 3-way handshake has not
been |
| | completed, the PBX is not started on this
channel. |
|
| |
| | Later, when the maximum number of retries have
been |
| | exceeded on responses to this NEW, the code tries
to |
| | hang up the call. Now, it has 2 ways to do
this, |
| | depending on if there is an ast_channel related to
this |
| | IAX2 session or not. If there is no channel, then it
can |
| | just destroy the iax2 private structure and move on.
If |
| | there is a channel, it queues a HANGUP frame,
and |
| | expects that to make the ast_channel get torn
down, |
| | which would then cause the pvt struct to get
destroyed |
| |
afterwords. |
|
| |
| | However, since there was no PBX started on this
channel, |
| | there is nothing servicing the channel to receive
the |
| | HANGUP frame. Therefore, the call never gets
destroyed. |
| | To make things worse, there is some code
continuously |
| | rescheduling PINGs and LAGRQs to be sent for the
active |
| | IAX2 call, which will always
fail. |
|
| |
| | In summary, sending a bunch of NEW frames to
request |
| | unauthenticated calls can make a server unusable
within |
| | a matter of
seconds. |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Resolution | The default configuration that is distributed
with |
| | Asterisk includes a guest account that
allows |
| | unauthenticated calls. If this account and any
other |
| | account without a password is disabled for IAX2, then
the |
| | system is not vulnerable to this
problem. |
|
| |
| | For systems that continue to allow unauthenticated
IAX2 |
| | calls, they must be updated to one of the versions
listed |
| | as including the fix
below. |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Affected
Versions |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Product | Release
| |
| | Series
| |
|----------------------------+-------------+-----------------------------|
| Asterisk Open Source | 1.0.x | Not
affected |
|----------------------------+-------------+-----------------------------|
| Asterisk Open Source | 1.2.x | 1.2.20, 1.2.21,
1.2.21.1, |
| | |
1.2.22 |
|----------------------------+-------------+-----------------------------|
| Asterisk Open Source | 1.4.x | 1.4.5, 1.4.6,
1.4.7, |
| | | 1.4.7.1,
1.4.8 |
|----------------------------+-------------+-----------------------------|
| Asterisk Business Edition | A.x.x | Not
affected |
|----------------------------+-------------+-----------------------------|
| Asterisk Business Edition | B.x.x | Not
affected |
|----------------------------+-------------+-----------------------------|
| AsteriskNOW | pre-release |
beta6 |
|----------------------------+-------------+-----------------------------|
| Asterisk Appliance | 0.x.x |
0.5.0 |
| Developer Kit |
| |
|----------------------------+-------------+-----------------------------|
| s800i (Asterisk Appliance) | 1.0.x | 1.0.0-beta5 up to
and |
| | | including
1.0.2 |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Corrected
In |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Product |
Release |
|----------------------+-------------------------------------------------|
| Asterisk Open Source | 1.2.23 and 1.4.9, available for download
from |
| |
http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk |
|----------------------+-------------------------------------------------|
| AsteriskNOW | Beta6, available
from |
| | http://www.asterisknow.org/. Users can
update |
| | using the system update feature in
the |
| | appliance control
panel. |
|----------------------+-------------------------------------------------|
| Asterisk Appliance | 0.6.0, available for download
from |
| Developer Kit |
http://ftp.digium.com/pub/aadk |
|----------------------+-------------------------------------------------|
| s800i (Asterisk |
1.0.3 |
| Appliance)
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Links
| |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Asterisk Project Security Advisories are posted
at |
|
http://www.asterisk.org/security. |
| |
| This document may be superseded by later versions; if so, the
latest |
| version will be posted at
http://ftp.digium.com/pub/asa/.pdf. |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Revision
History |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Date | Editor | Revisions
Made |
|-------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------|
| July 23, 2007 | russell at digium.com | Initial
Release |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Asterisk Project Security Advisory -
Copyright (c) 2007 Digium, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Permission is hereby granted to distribute and publish this advisory
in its
original, unaltered form.