Improper Authentication in strongSwan - CVE-2018-16151

 

Improper Authentication in strongSwan - CVE-2018-16151

Published: November 5, 2018


Vulnerability identifier: #VU15722
CSH Severity: Medium
CVSS v4: 6.3 [CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]
CVE-ID: CVE-2018-16151
CWE-ID: CWE-287
Exploitation vector: Remote access
Exploit availability: No public exploit available

Vulnerability details

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to bypass authentication process.

The vulnerability exists due to an error in RSA implementation based on GMP (verify_emsa_pkcs1_signature() in gmp_rsa_public_key.c) within the gmp plugin that does not reject excess data after the encoded algorithm OID during PKCS#1 v1.5 signature verification. A remote attacker can forge signatures when small public exponents are being used and impersonate the victim.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may allow an attacker to take full control over victim's session but requires that only an RSA signature is used for IKEv2 authentication.


Affected software

strongSwan
Gentoo Linux
Fedora
SUSE Linux Enterprise Debuginfo
SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Sale
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Opensuse
strongswan (Alpine package)
strongswan (Debian package)
strongswan
strongswan-doc
strongswan-debuginfo
strongswan-debugsource

How to mitigate CVE-2018-16151

Install updates from vendor's website.

strongSwan - update to 5.7.0
strongswan (Debian package) - addressed in versions 5.5.1-4+deb9u3, 5.5.1-4+deb9u4
strongswan (Alpine package) - update to 5.5.3-r3
strongswan - update to 4.4.0-6.36.12.1
strongswan-doc - update to 4.4.0-6.36.12.1
strongswan-debuginfo - update to 4.4.0-6.36.12.1
strongswan-debugsource - update to 4.4.0-6.36.12.1
strongswan - addressed in versions 5.7.1-1.el7, 5.7.1-1.fc27, 5.7.1-1.fc28, 5.7.1-1.fc29

External References

Related Security Bulletins