The Network Time Protocol is used to synchronize a computer"s time with a referenced time source. Robin Park and Dmitri Vinokurov discovered a flaw in the way ntpd handled certain malformed NTP packets. ntpd logged information about all such packets and replied with an NTP packet that was treated as malformed when received by another ntpd. A remote attacker could use this flaw to create an NTP packet reply loop between two ntpd servers via a malformed packet with a spoofed source IP address and port, causing ntpd on those servers to use excessive amounts of CPU time and fill disk space with log messages. All ntp users are advised to upgrade to this updated package, which contains a backported patch to resolve this issue. After installing the update, the ntpd daemon will restart automatically.