CVE-2014-7562 in Health Advocate SmartHelp
Summary
by MITRE
The Health Advocate SmartHelp (aka com.healthadvocate.ui) application 3.6 for Android does not verify X.509 certificates from SSL servers, which allows man-in-the-middle attackers to spoof servers and obtain sensitive information via a crafted certificate.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/11/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2014-7562 affects the Health Advocate SmartHelp Android application version 3.6, presenting a critical security flaw in the application's SSL certificate verification mechanisms. This weakness stems from the application's failure to properly validate X.509 certificates presented by SSL servers during secure communications, creating a significant attack surface that adversaries can exploit to compromise user data integrity and confidentiality. The vulnerability specifically targets the application's trust model implementation, which is fundamental to establishing secure communication channels between mobile applications and backend services.
The technical flaw manifests as a complete absence of certificate validation within the application's SSL handshake process, making it susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks where malicious actors can intercept and manipulate secure communications. When the application establishes SSL connections to remote servers, it accepts any certificate presented without performing the necessary verification steps including checking certificate authorities, expiration dates, or hostname matching. This primitive approach to SSL certificate handling directly violates established security best practices and creates an environment where attackers can generate or obtain fraudulent certificates that the application will accept without question, effectively disabling the encryption and authentication mechanisms that SSL is designed to provide.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple data interception to encompass potential data theft, session hijacking, and service impersonation attacks. Mobile applications like Health Advocate SmartHelp often handle sensitive personal health information, making them attractive targets for adversaries seeking to exploit such weaknesses. An attacker positioned between the mobile device and the server can present a forged certificate signed by a trusted authority, causing the application to establish a secure-looking connection while actually communicating with the attacker's server instead of the legitimate service. This allows for the theft of user credentials, personal health records, and other sensitive data that flows through the compromised communication channel.
This vulnerability maps directly to CWE-295, which specifically addresses "Improper Certificate Validation," and aligns with several ATT&CK techniques including T1566 for credential harvesting and T1041 for data encryption for exfiltration. The weakness represents a fundamental failure in the application's security architecture and demonstrates poor implementation of the SSL/TLS protocol compliance requirements. Organizations should implement proper certificate pinning mechanisms, ensure robust certificate validation routines, and regularly audit their mobile applications for similar security flaws. The recommended mitigations include implementing certificate verification checks, deploying certificate pinning strategies, and ensuring that all SSL connections perform proper validation of certificate chains and trust relationships to prevent such man-in-the-middle scenarios from occurring in production environments.