0007952: Improper patching of restricted ports

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0007952	Kali Linux	Kali Package Improvement	public	2022-09-25 16:42	2022-12-20 01:32

Reporter	fob	Assigned To	sbrun
Priority	normal	Severity	tweak	Reproducibility	always
Status	resolved	Resolution	fixed
Product Version	kali-dev
Fixed in Version	kali-dev

Summary	0007952: Improper patching of restricted ports
Description	Hi, I was surprised to notice that regular users can open restricted ports (<1024). Tracking the change, I could not locate a change to the "ip_unprivileged_port_start" kernel parameter in /etc/sysctl.* I then noticed this was announced in https://www.kali.org/blog/kali-linux-2021-2-release/#disabled-privileged-ports as a kernel patch. This change is implemented in https://gitlab.com/kalilinux/packages/linux/-/commit/1cddddf656ab251cc72fdc1c4e1706db86a5150b The use of a kernel patch rather than using a sysctl parameter is questionable. Kernel patches should be last resort changes when there are no other ways to fix an issue. They are intrusive. I suggest that this change (no privileged ports) that the Kali project decided to make be done using sysctl parameters rather than a kernel patch.

g0tmi1k 2022-10-06 13:21 administrator ~0016936	Hi @fob, Thanks for the suggestion - this is something we will deff look into!

arnaudr 2022-12-20 01:32 manager ~0017260	Heya, this is now done! The patch was removed in source package linux 6.0.10-2kali. We now have default sysctl settings (provided by package kali-defaults) in /usr/lib/sysctl.d/ to disable restricted ports by default. There's also an entry in the tool kali-tweaks to re-enable restricted port if required. Closing. Thanks again for the report!

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2022-09-25 16:42	fob	New Issue
2022-09-26 08:03	daniruiz	Assigned To	=> sbrun
2022-09-26 08:03	daniruiz	Status	new => assigned
2022-10-06 13:21	g0tmi1k	Note Added: 0016936
2022-12-20 01:32	arnaudr	Note Added: 0017260
2022-12-20 01:32	arnaudr	Status	assigned => resolved
2022-12-20 01:32	arnaudr	Resolution	open => fixed
2022-12-20 01:32	arnaudr	Fixed in Version	=> kali-dev