CVE-2005-1062 in Personal Firewall
Summary
by MITRE
The administration protocol for Kerio WinRoute Firewall 6.x up to 6.0.10, Personal Firewall 4.x up to 4.1.2, and MailServer up to 6.0.8 allows remote attackers to quickly obtain passwords that are 5 characters or less via brute force methods.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/01/2021
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2005-1062 represents a critical security flaw in several Kerio firewall and mail server products including WinRoute Firewall 6.x through 6.0.10, Personal Firewall 4.x through 4.1.2, and MailServer 6.0.8 and earlier versions. This issue stems from weak authentication mechanisms within the administration protocol that fails to implement adequate protection against automated password guessing attacks. The vulnerability specifically targets systems where administrative passwords are short, particularly those consisting of five characters or fewer, making them susceptible to rapid brute force exploitation. The flaw demonstrates poor security design principles and inadequate implementation of account lockout mechanisms or rate limiting controls that would normally prevent such attacks from succeeding within reasonable timeframes.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability lies in the administration protocol's failure to enforce strong authentication policies and its susceptibility to dictionary and brute force attacks. Attackers can systematically test password combinations against the administrative interface, exploiting the fact that shorter passwords offer significantly reduced entropy and can be cracked much more quickly than longer, more complex credentials. This vulnerability directly maps to CWE-521 Weak Password Requirements, which specifically addresses the issue of weak password policies that allow for easy compromise through automated attack methods. The protocol's design does not incorporate any meaningful protection against rapid successive authentication attempts, making it trivial for threat actors to enumerate valid administrative credentials through automated tools.
The operational impact of CVE-2005-1062 extends beyond simple credential theft, as successful exploitation provides attackers with complete administrative control over the affected systems. This level of access enables unauthorized modifications to firewall rules, complete system configuration changes, and potential access to sensitive email data within the MailServer component. The vulnerability's exploitation time frame is particularly concerning as it allows for rapid compromise of systems where administrators may have chosen shorter passwords for convenience, believing they are sufficient for basic protection. This attack vector aligns with ATT&CK technique T1110.001 Brute Force: Password Guessing, which describes methods used to gain access to systems through repeated authentication attempts using common password combinations.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability must address both immediate remediation and long-term security improvements. Organizations should immediately implement strong password policies requiring administrative accounts to use complex passwords of at least 12 characters with mixed character types, ensuring that passwords exceed the vulnerable length threshold. The administration protocols should be configured with rate limiting and account lockout mechanisms to prevent rapid successive authentication attempts. Network segmentation and firewall rules should restrict direct access to administrative interfaces from external networks, requiring secure remote access methods such as VPN connections. Additionally, regular security audits should verify that all administrative accounts follow strong credential policies, and monitoring systems should be implemented to detect and alert on unusual authentication patterns that may indicate brute force attacks. System administrators should also consider implementing multi-factor authentication for administrative access where possible, as this would provide additional protection layers beyond password-based authentication.