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Fencer Intel
low 3.7

CVE-2016-1551 json

ntpd in NTP 4.2.8p3 and NTPsec a5fb34b9cc89b92a8fef2f459004865c93bb7f92 relies on the underlying operating system to protect it from reques…

published 2017-01-27 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-2646

cvss
3.7
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.2%
EPSS 2.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 82%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

ntpd in NTP 4.2.8p3 and NTPsec a5fb34b9cc89b92a8fef2f459004865c93bb7f92 relies on the underlying operating system to protect it from requests that impersonate reference clocks. Because reference clocks are treated like other peers and stored in the same structure, any packet with a source ip address of a reference clock (127.127.1.1 for example) that reaches the receive() function will match that reference clock's peer record and will be treated as a trusted peer. Any system that lacks the typical martian packet filtering which would block these packets is in danger of having its time controlled by an attacker.

Patch / fix

  • ntp SLES for SAP 12, SLES 12, SLED 12 4.2.8p8-46.8.1
  • ntp SLES 11 SP3-TERADATA, SLES 11 SP3-LTSS, SLES 11 SP2-LTSS +3 more 4.2.8p7-44.1
  • ntp SLES 12 SP1, SLES 11 SP4, SLED 12 SP1 +2 more 4.2.8p7-11.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2016:1568-1SUSE-SU-2016:1471-1SUSE-SU-2016:1291-1SUSE-SU-2016:1278-1

  • ntp openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.2.8p9-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10181-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2016-1551 updated cvss 2.6

ntp: ntpd reference clock impersonation

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 ntp Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 ntp, ntpdate, ntp-perl Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ntp, sntp, ntpdate, ntp-perl
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

2.23% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 82% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 3.7 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
NVD 2.0 2.6 AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Affected products

  • NTP Project NTP
  • NTPsec Project NTPSec

Classification

Weakness

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.