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The next webinar in the "Setting up Samba on AIX with SAMBA+" series will be held on February 22, 2024, from 3 to 4 p.m. (CET). Registration for the event and more information can be found here. The platform used is GoTo Webinar.

In the webinar, participants will learn from our expert Björn Jacke how to set up Samba with SAMBA+ on AIX, IBM's Unix operating system, and integrate it into an Active Directory environment. Among other things, they will receive tips on how to overcome frequently occurring difficulties. Special attention will also be paid to parameter settings in AIX. There will also be an opportunity to clarify any questions.

This webinar will be held in English. Further dates will be announced shortly.

"Backup of Windows AD and how to migrate it to Samba" was presented by Björn Jacke and Volker Lendecke on December 7, 2023 in the auditorium of the Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The two long-standing members of the Samba team at SerNet and the Samba Core Team contributed the talk to the Adminstammtisch Berlin event series.

The – German only – talk offers the opportunity to benefit from extensive knowledge of migrating and securing Windows Active Directory to Samba: Most Active Directory installations are Windows-based. Samba allows such an AD installation to be backed up using Unix means and the backup then made to run with a Samba DC. This can be useful not only for backups but also for a Windows to Samba migration, which Jacke and Lendecke demonstrated. A recording is available.

They also gave valuable insights into Samba and the SAMBA+ software packages offered by SerNet for various Linux distributions and IBM AIX. The Adminstammtisch Berlin is organized by and for IT professionals who are committed to sharing knowledge and experience and discussing current IT topics.

SAMBA+ 4.19.3-5 and SAMBA+ 4.18.9-9 have just been released by SerNet's Samba team. Packages for various SUSE and Red Hat platforms as well as for Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu and AIX are available now.

Please see the release history here:

• https://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-4.19.3.html
• https://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-4.18.9.html

The fix for CVE-2018-14628, which is now part of the upstream 4.19.3 and 4.18.9 releases was already fixed in SAMBA+ 4.19.2 and SAMBA+ 4.18.8. For completeness we describe once more how to apply the actual fix for the AD database. If you did that already along with the previous SAMBA+ update, then you don't have to do the following steps again.

Action required in order to resolve CVE-2018-14628

The patched Samba does NOT protect existing domains!

The administrator needs to run the following command (on only one domain controller) in order to apply the protection to an existing domain:

  samba-tool dbcheck --cross-ncs --attrs=nTSecurityDescriptor --fix

The above requires manual interaction in order to review the changes before they are applied. Typicall question look like this:

  Reset nTSecurityDescriptor on CN=Deleted Objects,DC=samba,DC=org back to provision default?
        Owner mismatch: SY (in ref) DA(in current)
        Group mismatch: SY (in ref) DA(in current)
        Part dacl is different between reference and current here is the detail:
                (A;;LCRPLORC;;;AU) ACE is not present in the reference
                (A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;SY) ACE is not present in the reference
                (A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;DA) ACE is not present in the reference
                (A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPSDRCWDWO;;;SY) ACE is not present in the current
                (A;;LCRP;;;BA) ACE is not present in the current
   [y/N/all/none] y
  Fixed attribute 'nTSecurityDescriptor' of 'CN=Deleted Objects,DC=samba,DC=org' 

The change should be confirmed with 'y' for all objects starting with

'CN=Deleted Objects'.

SAMBA+ 4.19.2-4 has just been released by SerNet's Samba team. Packages for various SUSE and Red Hat platforms as well as for Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu and AIX are available now.

https://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-4.19.2.html

In addition to the fixed from the release notes above SAMBA+ contains also 2 additional notable fixes:

A fix for Kerboros User2User TGS-REQ, which may prevent users to retrieve tickets for themselves in certain conditions: https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15492

Even more important is the second additional change, which fixes the permission of the deleted objects container (CVE-2018-14628). It is however required to run a command to fix the permission, because the ACLs on the container will not be changed automatically. What you will have to do to fix the permission is this:

==================================================
Action required in order to resolve CVE-2018-14628
==================================================

The patched Samba does NOT protect existing domains!

The administrator needs to run the following command (on only one domain controller) in order to apply the protection to an existing domain:

  samba-tool dbcheck --cross-ncs --attrs=nTSecurityDescriptor --fix

The above requires manual interaction in order to review the changes before they are applied. Typicall question look like this:

  Reset nTSecurityDescriptor on CN=Deleted Objects,DC=samba,DC=org back to provision default?
        Owner mismatch: SY (in ref) DA(in current)
        Group mismatch: SY (in ref) DA(in current)
        Part dacl is different between reference and current here is the detail:
                (A;;LCRPLORC;;;AU) ACE is not present in the reference
                (A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;SY) ACE is not present in the reference
                (A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;DA) ACE is not present in the reference
                (A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPSDRCWDWO;;;SY) ACE is not present in the current
                (A;;LCRP;;;BA) ACE is not present in the current
   [y/N/all/none] y
  Fixed attribute 'nTSecurityDescriptor' of 'CN=Deleted Objects,DC=samba,DC=org'

The change should be confirmed with 'y' for all objects starting with 'CN=Deleted Objects'.

The next updates of the 4.17 and 4.18 SAMBA+ packages will also address CVE-2018-14628.

SAMBA+ packages are available as software subscriptions and can be purchased in the SAMBA+ shop. Detailed information and prices can be found at https://usdshop.samba.plus (currency: USD) or https://shop.samba.plus (currency: EUR). The new SAMBA+ packages are included in the existing subscriptions. If you have any further questions or would like to request a quote, please feel free to contact us.

SerNet Samba Team

SAMBA+ 4.19.1, 4.18.8 and 4.17.12 have just been released. Packages for various SUSE and Red Hat platforms as well as for Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu and AIX are available now. Please note: This are Security Updates, packages should be deployed as soon as possible. These packages address several security related issues.

• CVE-2023-3961 Unsanitized client pipe name passed to local_np_connect()
• CVE-2023-4154 dirsync allows SYSTEM access with only "GUID_DRS_GET_CHANGES" right, not "GUID_DRS_GET_ALL_CHANGES"
• CVE-2023-4091 Client can truncate file with read-only permissions
• CVE-2023-42670 The procedure number is out of range when starting Active Directory Users and Computers
• CVE-2023-42669 rpcecho, enabled and running in AD DC, allows blocking sleep on request

Additionally the 4.19.1 release includes fixes for:

• Bug 15491: Heap buffer overflow with freshness tokens in the Heimdal KDC