Apache Qpid Proton-J Transport 0.3 Certificate Verification certificate validation

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Apache Qpid Proton-J Transport 0.3. This vulnerability affects unknown code of the component Certificate Verification. The manipulation leads to certificate validation. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2018-17187. The attack is possible to be carried out remotely. No exploit exists.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in Apache Qpid Proton-J Transport 0.3. This issue affects an unknown code of the component Certificate Verification. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a certificate validation vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-295. The product does not validate, or incorrectly validates, a certificate. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

The Apache Qpid Proton-J transport includes an optional wrapper layer to perform TLS, enabled by use of the 'transport.ssl(...)' methods. Unless a verification mode was explicitly configured, client and server modes previously defaulted as documented to not verifying a peer certificate, with options to configure this explicitly or select a certificate verification mode with or without hostname verification being performed. The latter hostname verifying mode was not implemented in Apache Qpid Proton-J versions 0.3 to 0.29.0, with attempts to use it resulting in an exception. This left only the option to verify the certificate is trusted, leaving such a client vulnerable to Man In The Middle (MITM) attack. Uses of the Proton-J protocol engine which do not utilise the optional transport TLS wrapper are not impacted, e.g. usage within Qpid JMS. Uses of Proton-J utilising the optional transport TLS wrapper layer that wish to enable hostname verification must be upgraded to version 0.30.0 or later and utilise the VerifyMode#VERIFY_PEER_NAME configuration, which is now the default for client mode usage unless configured otherwise.

The bug was discovered 11/12/2018. The weakness was disclosed 11/13/2018 (Website). It is possible to read the advisory at securityfocus.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2018-17187 since 09/19/2018. The attack may be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is needed for a successful exploitation. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $5k-$25k at the moment (estimation calculated on 04/12/2020). The attack technique deployed by this issue is T1587.003 according to MITRE ATT&CK.

The vulnerability was handled as a non-public zero-day exploit for at least 1 days. During that time the estimated underground price was around $5k-$25k.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at SecurityFocus (BID 105935†). Be aware that VulDB is the high quality source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Vendor

• Apache

Name

• Qpid Proton-J Transport

Version

• 0.3

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.apache.org/

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