CVE-2014-7676 in Home Made Air Freshener
Summary
by MITRE
The Home Made Air Freshener (aka com.wHomeMadeAirFreshener) application 1.1 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 • 10/14/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2014-7676 affects the Home Made Air Freshener Android application version 1.1, representing a critical security flaw in the application's implementation of secure communication protocols. This weakness resides in the application's failure to properly validate X.509 certificates during SSL/TLS connections, creating a significant attack surface that exposes users to sophisticated man-in-the-middle attacks. The vulnerability directly impacts the application's ability to establish trust with remote servers, fundamentally undermining the security of data transmission between the mobile device and backend services.
The technical flaw manifests as a complete absence of certificate verification mechanisms within the application's SSL implementation, which falls under the CWE-295 category of "Improper Certificate Validation." This weakness allows attackers to present fraudulent certificates that the application accepts without proper scrutiny, effectively bypassing the cryptographic security measures designed to protect sensitive data exchanges. The vulnerability operates at the transport layer security level, where the application should be implementing certificate pinning or proper certificate chain validation but instead accepts any certificate presented by an attacker-controlled server.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability creates severe implications for user data protection and privacy. Attackers can exploit this weakness to intercept and manipulate communications between the Android application and its servers, potentially gaining access to personal information, authentication credentials, or other sensitive data that flows through the insecure connection. The attack vector is particularly dangerous in public Wi-Fi environments where network traffic interception is common, making the vulnerability exploitable in real-world scenarios without requiring physical access to the device or sophisticated attack infrastructure.
The security implications extend beyond simple data interception to encompass potential account compromise and identity theft. This vulnerability aligns with ATT&CK technique T1041 by enabling network sniffing and traffic interception, while also supporting T1566 through the exploitation of weak certificate validation. Organizations and users should recognize that this flaw represents a fundamental breakdown in the application's security architecture, as proper certificate validation is a basic security requirement for any application handling sensitive information. The vulnerability demonstrates a critical failure in secure coding practices and highlights the importance of implementing proper SSL/TLS certificate validation mechanisms in mobile applications.
Mitigation strategies should include immediate implementation of certificate pinning for all SSL connections, proper X.509 certificate validation with chain of trust verification, and regular security audits of cryptographic implementations. Developers should also consider implementing certificate revocation checking and establishing secure communication protocols that prevent downgrade attacks. The application should be updated to enforce strict certificate validation and reject any connections that fail proper certificate authentication, while also implementing additional security controls such as secure key storage and proper error handling for cryptographic operations to prevent similar vulnerabilities from emerging in future versions.