CVE-2015-7542 in libgwenhywfar
Summary
by MITRE
An issue exists in libgwenhywfar through 4.12.0 due to the usage of outdated bundled CA certificates.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/18/2024
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2015-7542 represents a significant security weakness in the libgwenhywfar library version 4.12.0 and earlier, where the software incorporates outdated Certificate Authority (CA) certificates within its bundled components. This issue stems from the library's approach to handling cryptographic trust relationships, specifically through the inclusion of a static set of CA certificates that have not been regularly updated to reflect current security standards and certificate expiration schedules. The flaw resides in the library's design philosophy of maintaining its own certificate store rather than relying on the system's trusted certificate authorities, creating a potential attack surface where outdated certificates could be exploited to facilitate man-in-the-middle attacks or certificate validation bypasses.
This vulnerability operates through the fundamental principle of trust delegation in public key infrastructure where applications using libgwenhywfar may accept certificates signed by compromised or deprecated CAs that are present in the bundled certificate store. The technical implementation flaw manifests when the library's certificate verification process fails to properly validate against current certificate revocation status or when it accepts certificates from outdated CAs that have been compromised or deprecated by their issuing authorities. The impact extends beyond simple certificate validation failures to encompass potential cryptographic downgrade attacks, where adversaries could exploit the outdated certificate trust model to impersonate legitimate services or intercept encrypted communications between applications and their intended recipients.
The operational consequences of this vulnerability are particularly severe in environments where libgwenhywfar is used as a dependency for security-critical applications such as financial services, healthcare systems, or government platforms that rely on proper certificate validation for secure communications. Attackers could leverage this weakness to perform certificate forgery operations against applications that use the affected library, potentially leading to unauthorized access to sensitive data, session hijacking, or complete system compromise. The vulnerability's persistence across multiple versions indicates a design flaw that requires ongoing maintenance and updates to the bundled certificate store, which is inconsistent with modern security practices that emphasize dynamic certificate validation and regular updates.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including updating to libgwenhywfar version 4.12.1 or later where the certificate bundle has been refreshed, or alternatively configuring applications to use system-wide certificate stores rather than relying on the bundled certificates. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-310, which addresses cryptographic weakness in certificate validation processes, and maps to ATT&CK technique T1552.001 for unsecured credentials and T1046 for network service scanning that could be leveraged to exploit the outdated certificate trust model. Security teams should conduct comprehensive audits of systems using this library to identify all applications that may be vulnerable, particularly those in critical infrastructure sectors where the impact of certificate validation failures could be catastrophic. Regular security monitoring and automated certificate validation checks should be implemented to prevent exploitation of similar vulnerabilities in other cryptographic libraries and applications that maintain static certificate stores.