CVE-2018-1153 in Burp Suite Community Edition
Summary
by MITRE
Burp Suite Community Edition 1.7.32 and 1.7.33 fail to validate the server certificate in a couple of HTTPS requests which allows a man in the middle to modify or view traffic.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 02/20/2020
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2018-1153 affects Burp Suite Community Edition versions 1.7.32 and 1.7.33, representing a critical security flaw in the proxy component's handling of secure communications. This issue manifests in the software's inability to properly validate server certificates during specific HTTPS requests, creating a significant attack surface that undermines the integrity of encrypted communications. The flaw directly impacts the fundamental security promise of HTTPS protocols by allowing malicious actors to establish fraudulent connections without proper authentication.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from insufficient certificate validation mechanisms within Burp Suite's proxy functionality. When the software processes certain HTTPS requests, it fails to perform proper certificate chain validation, hostname verification, or cryptographic signature checks that are essential for establishing trust in secure communications. This weakness creates a scenario where attackers can successfully execute man-in-the-middle attacks against users who rely on Burp Suite for security testing or web application analysis. The vulnerability operates at the transport layer security validation level, specifically targeting the SSL/TLS certificate validation process that should normally prevent unauthorized parties from intercepting or modifying encrypted traffic.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability poses severe risks to security professionals and organizations that depend on Burp Suite for penetration testing, web application security assessments, and network monitoring activities. The impact extends beyond simple traffic interception to encompass complete data compromise, as attackers can modify content in transit, inject malicious code, or exfiltrate sensitive information without detection. Security testing environments become compromised when tools designed to identify vulnerabilities are themselves vulnerable to exploitation, creating a dangerous paradox where the security assessment tool can be used to attack the very systems it is meant to protect. This vulnerability particularly affects organizations that use Burp Suite in production security monitoring or continuous integration pipelines where trusted certificate validation is critical.
The mitigation strategy for CVE-2018-1153 requires immediate software updates to versions that properly implement certificate validation, specifically targeting the fix released by PortSwigger for Burp Suite Community Edition. Organizations should also implement additional network monitoring to detect anomalous certificate behavior and establish more robust certificate management policies. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-295 which addresses improper certificate validation, and represents a clear violation of the principle of least privilege in security tooling. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to techniques involving credential access and initial access through network sniffing and man-in-the-middle attacks, potentially enabling further lateral movement and data exfiltration. Organizations should also consider implementing alternative certificate validation mechanisms and regular security assessments of their security tooling to prevent similar issues in other components of their security infrastructure.