CVE-2024-3183: FreeIPA Information Disclosure Vulnerability

CVE-2024-3183 Overview

CVE-2024-3183 is a cryptographic weakness in FreeIPA's Kerberos ticket handling, shipped as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Ticket Granting Service Request (TGS-REQ) encrypts the returned ticket directly with the target principal's long-term key. For user principals, that key is derived from a hash of a per-principal salt and the user's password, making tickets susceptible to offline brute force attacks.

An authenticated attacker who compromises any principal can request service tickets for other principals, harvest the encrypted tickets and salts, and then crack them offline to recover cleartext passwords. The flaw is tracked under [CWE-916: Use of Password Hash With Insufficient Computational Effort].

Critical Impact
A single compromised principal enables offline password recovery for any other principal in the Kerberos realm, undermining domain-wide authentication trust.

Affected Products

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8 (FreeIPA component)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AUS 8.2, 8.4, 8.6
Red Hat Enterprise Linux EUS 8.8, TUS 8.4/8.6, and Update Services for SAP Solutions 8.4/8.6

Discovery Timeline

2024-06-12 - CVE-2024-3183 published to the National Vulnerability Database
2024-06-12 - Red Hat issued advisories RHSA-2024:3754 through RHSA-2024:3775
2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2024-3183

Vulnerability Analysis

The flaw exists in how FreeIPA's Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) constructs TGS-REP responses. The outer message uses the requester's session key, which is ephemeral and resistant to brute force. However, the embedded service ticket is encrypted using the target principal's long-term key derived directly from the user's password and a static per-principal salt.

Because any authenticated principal can request tickets to any other principal, an attacker with one valid Kerberos identity can enumerate the realm and collect tickets encrypted under other users' password-derived keys. These tickets, combined with the corresponding salts, become offline crackable material. Password strength is the only remaining barrier.

The issue reflects the classic Kerberoasting attack pattern historically observed in Active Directory, now applicable to FreeIPA environments. The EPSS score of 2.053% (79th percentile) reflects moderate real-world exploitation interest.

Root Cause

The root cause is the use of a password-derived key with insufficient computational effort (CWE-916) to encrypt tickets returned to arbitrary requesters. Kerberos ticket encryption keys for user principals are produced by a single-pass string-to-key function over the password and per-principal salt. This function lacks the iteration count or memory-hardness required to resist modern GPU-accelerated cracking.

Attack Vector

The attack requires network access to the FreeIPA KDC and low-privilege authenticated access via any principal. The attacker authenticates, requests TGS tickets for the target principals (typically service or user accounts), and captures the responses. The encrypted tickets and salts are then transferred offline to a cracking rig running tools such as hashcat or John the Ripper with the appropriate Kerberos 5 TGS-REP mode.

Exploitation does not require any user interaction and leaves minimal artifacts beyond standard Kerberos ticket requests, which are common in normal directory operations.

See the Red Hat CVE Analysis for CVE-2024-3183 and FreeIPA 4.12.1 release notes for the upstream technical write-up.

Detection Methods for CVE-2024-3183

Indicators of Compromise

Unusual volumes of TGS-REQ requests from a single principal targeting many distinct service principal names within a short window.
Kerberos ticket requests specifying legacy or weaker encryption types such as rc4-hmac where stronger types are available.
Authentication activity from principals used for automation or service accounts outside of their normal request patterns.

Detection Strategies

Monitor the FreeIPA KDC logs (/var/log/krb5kdc.log) for enumeration patterns where one principal issues TGS-REQ messages for many target principals.
Correlate KDC events with host telemetry to identify accounts querying principals unrelated to their operational role.
Baseline normal ticket request rates per principal and alert on statistically significant deviations.

Monitoring Recommendations

Forward KDC audit logs to a centralized analytics platform for long-term retention and cross-source correlation.
Track failed password change events and repeated preauthentication failures on principals suspected of offline cracking follow-up.
Review service principals for weak or non-expiring passwords quarterly.

How to Mitigate CVE-2024-3183

Immediate Actions Required

Apply the Red Hat errata packages published under RHSA-2024:3754 through RHSA-2024:3775 on all FreeIPA servers and replicas.
Rotate passwords for any principals suspected of exposure, prioritizing service and administrative accounts.
Enforce strong password policies with high entropy to reduce feasibility of offline brute force recovery.

Patch Information

Red Hat delivered fixed FreeIPA packages across RHEL 7, RHEL 8, and the AUS, EUS, TUS, and Update Services for SAP Solutions channels. Upstream fixes ship in FreeIPA 4.12.1 and are also distributed via the Fedora package announcement. Verify remediation using rpm -q ipa-server after updating and restart KDC services.

Workarounds

Restrict which principals can request tickets to sensitive accounts using Kerberos authorization policies where operationally viable.
Disable weak Kerberos encryption types such as rc4-hmac and des-cbc-* and require aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96 or stronger.
Enforce lengthy, randomized passwords for service principals to raise the cost of offline cracking beyond practical limits.

bash

# Configuration example: patch RHEL/FreeIPA and harden encryption types
sudo dnf update ipa-server ipa-client freeipa-server freeipa-client
sudo systemctl restart krb5kdc kadmin

# In /var/kerberos/krb5kdc/kdc.conf, restrict permitted enctypes
# supported_enctypes = aes256-cts-hmac-sha1-96:normal aes128-cts-hmac-sha1-96:normal

# Enforce a strong password policy for all users
ipa pwpolicy-mod --minlength=16 --minclasses=4 --maxlife=60