Description of problem:

Back port request for upstream fix at https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/ticket/2803#comment:3 to RHEL7

From there:
We believe there is a memory leak in the sssd_pac_plugin (sssd_pac_plugin.so library) distributed with the sssd_client package. 

The issue was revealed in one of our daemons using kerberos 5 authentication and leaking gigabytes of memory after several days (1GB/day on average for 10 authentications per second). Putting it in valgrind, we found the following :

==27734== 1,344 (+1,344) (32 (+32) direct, 1,312 (+1,312) indirect) bytes in 1 (+1) blocks are definitely lost in loss record 484 of 540
==27734==    at 0x4A06A2E: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:270)
==27734==    by 0x50D96C2: krb5_pac_init (pac.c:231)
==27734==    by 0x50D9D2D: krb5_pac_parse (pac.c:332)
==27734==    by 0x19C70CA6: sssdpac_verify (sssd_pac.c:144)
==27734==    by 0x50C1E52: krb5int_authdata_verify (authdata.c:617)
==27734==    by 0x50E19CF: rd_req_decoded_opt (rd_req_dec.c:437)
==27734==    by 0x50E1A59: krb5_rd_req_decoded (rd_req_dec.c:599)
==27734==    by 0x50E0A88: krb5_rd_req (rd_req.c:87)
==27734==    by 0x4E49770: kg_accept_krb5 (accept_sec_context.c:643)
==27734==    by 0x4E4B0A9: krb5_gss_accept_sec_context_ext (accept_sec_context.c:1338)
==27734==    by 0x4E4B208: krb5_gss_accept_sec_context (accept_sec_context.c:1367)
==27734==    by 0x4E3AC22: gss_accept_sec_context (g_accept_sec_context.c:203)
==27734==    by 0x19A6C728: Csec_server_establish_context_ext_KRB5 (Csec_plugin_GSS.c:482)
==27734==    by 0x834EBC2: Csec_server_establish_context_ext_caller (Csec_plugin.h:129)
==27734==    by 0x835416A: Csec_server_establish_context_ext (Csec_api.c:277)
==27734==    by 0x8353FE4: Csec_server_establishContext (Csec_api.c:218)
==27734==    by 0x406407: doit (Cns_main.c:747)
==27734==    by 0x8129420: _Cpool_starter (Cpool.c:377)
==27734==    by 0x8124914: _Cthread_start_pthread (Cthread.c:209)
==27734==    by 0x30CCA07A50: start_thread (pthread_create.c:301)
==27734==    by 0x30CC6E89AC: clone (clone.S:115)

The study of the corresponding code clearly shows a genuine bug introduced in sssd_client via commit 92af6f25 in May 2013. Here are the details :

    in krb5int_authdata_verify (authdata.c:617), so krb5 code, the plugin is called :

       code = (*module->ftable->verify)(kcontext,
                                        context,
                                        module->plugin_context,
                                        *(module->request_context_pp),
                                        auth_context,
                                        key,
                                        ap_req);

    this calls sssdpac_verify (sssd_pac.c:144) and the code looks like this (I've dropped irrelevant lines and commented) :

         krb5_pac pac;   // krb5_pac is actually a pointer type
         ...
         kerr = krb5_pac_parse(kcontext, sssdctx->data.data,    // allocation of the pac pointer from input data
                               sssdctx->data.length, &pac);
         ...
         kerr = krb5_pac_verify(kcontext, pac,                  // verification of the pac content
                                req->ticket->enc_part2->times.authtime,
                                req->ticket->enc_part2->client, key, NULL);
         ...           // no reference to pac
         return 0;     // memory leak!

    I did check the code of parse and verify, and they are doing what you expect, so no hidden ref count or anything special. 

So according to all this, the patch to the leak is the following :

diff --git a/src/sss_client/sssd_pac.c b/src/sss_client/sssd_pac.c
index 1939f61..1d1fe8a 100644
--- a/src/sss_client/sssd_pac.c
+++ b/src/sss_client/sssd_pac.c
@@ -150,6 +150,10 @@ static krb5_error_code sssdpac_verify(krb5_context kcontext,
     kerr = krb5_pac_verify(kcontext, pac,
                            req->ticket->enc_part2->times.authtime,
                            req->ticket->enc_part2->client, key, NULL);
+    // deallocate pac - fixes memory leak reported in bug ...
+    krb5_pac_free(kcontext, pac);
+    pac = NULL;
+    // check result of the verification
     if (kerr != 0) {
         /* The krb5 documentation says:
          * A checksum mismatch can occur if the PAC was copied from a


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

This has been found on a machine running the following versions of kerberos and sssd :
   krb5-workstation-1.12.2-15.el7_1.x86_64
   krb5-libs-1.12.2-15.el7_1.x86_64
   krb5-libs-1.12.2-15.el7_1.i686
   sssd-client-1.12.2-58.el7_1.17.x86_64