Badlock Vulnerability Falls Flat Against Hype (threatpost.com)

msm1267 quotes a report from Threatpost: Weeks of anxiety and concern over the Badlock vulnerability ended today with an anticlimactic thud. Badlock was the security boogeyman since the appearance three weeks ago of a website and logo branding the bug as something serious in Samba, an open source implementation of the server message block (SMB) protocol that provides file and print services for Windows clients. As it turns out, Badlock was hardly the remote code execution monster many anticipated. Instead, it's a man-in-the-middle and denial-of-service bug, allowing an attacker to elevate privileges or crash a Windows machine running Samba services. SerNet, a German consultancy behind the discovery of Badlock, fueled the hype at the outset with a number of since-deleted tweets that said any marketing boost as a result of its branding and private disclosure of the bug to Microsoft was a bonus for its business. For its part, Microsoft refused to join the hype machine and today in MS16-047 issued a security update it rated 'Important' for the Windows Security Account Manager (SAM) and Local Security Authority (Domain Policy) (LSAD). The bulletin patches one vulnerability (CVE-2016-0128), an elevation of privilege bug in both SAM and LSAD that could be exploited in a man-in-the-middle attack, forcing a downgrade of the authentication level of both channels, Microsoft said. An attacker could then impersonate an authenticated user.

Comments

Red Hat has a different view - and it's not hype

[darthcamaro]

I don't know much about Windows and there there are 12 other advisories more impactful that Badlock this month - but Red Hat is and has taken the Linux related vulnerabilities *very* seriously - which is a good thing, it means no shellshocked/heartbleed repeat, patches on time and no real risk.

"Working closely with the community over many months, Red Hat engineers have been heavily involved in the process of analyzing and developing Samba patches for Badlock-associated issues," Josh Bressers, security strategist at Red Hat sad.

Re:Was it because if you're talking MS protocols..

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

It's not an SMB protocol bug. It's a generic flaw in the DCE RPC protocol used for all RPC services on Windows and specifically to administer Active Directory Domain Controllers. That's why we really want people to patch (both Samba *and* Windows users).