Vulnerabilities > CVE-2015-3420 - Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in multiple products

047910
CVSS 4.3 - MEDIUM
Attack vector
NETWORK
Attack complexity
MEDIUM
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
NONE
Integrity impact
NONE
Availability impact
PARTIAL

Summary

The ssl-proxy-openssl.c function in Dovecot before 2.2.17, when SSLv3 is disabled, allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (login process crash) via vectors related to handshake failures.

Vulnerable Configurations

Part Description Count
Application
Dovecot
161
OS
Fedoraproject
3

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Creating a Rogue Certificate Authority Certificate
    An attacker exploits a weakness in the MD5 hash algorithm (weak collision resistance) to generate a certificate signing request (CSR) that contains collision blocks in the "to be signed" part. The attacker specially crafts two different, but valid X.509 certificates that when hashed with the MD5 algorithm would yield the same value. The attacker then sends the CSR for one of the certificates to the Certification Authority which uses the MD5 hashing algorithm. That request is completely valid and the Certificate Authority issues an X.509 certificate to the attacker which is signed with its private key. An attacker then takes that signed blob and inserts it into another X.509 certificate that the attacker generated. Due to the MD5 collision, both certificates, though different, hash to the same value and so the signed blob works just as well in the second certificate. The net effect is that the attackers' second X.509 certificate, which the Certification Authority has never seen, is now signed and validated by that Certification Authority. To make the attack more interesting, the second certificate could be not just a regular certificate, but rather itself a signing certificate. Thus the attacker is able to start their own Certification Authority that is anchored in its root of trust in the legitimate Certification Authority that has signed the attackers' first X.509 certificate. If the original Certificate Authority was accepted by default by browsers, so will now the Certificate Authority set up by the attacker and of course any certificates that it signs. So the attacker is now able to generate any SSL certificates to impersonate any web server, and the user's browser will not issue any warning to the victim. This can be used to compromise HTTPS communications and other types of systems where PKI and X.509 certificates may be used (e.g., VPN, IPSec) .

Nessus

  • NASL familyFedora Local Security Checks
    NASL idFEDORA_2015-7159.NASL
    descriptionfixes CVE-2015-3420: SSL/TLS handshake failures leading to a crash of the login process - dovecot updated to 2.2.16 - auth: Don
    last seen2020-06-05
    modified2015-05-20
    plugin id83549
    published2015-05-20
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2015-2020 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/83549
    titleFedora 20 : dovecot-2.2.16-2.fc20 (2015-7159)
    code
    #%NASL_MIN_LEVEL 80502
    #
    # (C) Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    #
    # The descriptive text and package checks in this plugin were  
    # extracted from Fedora Security Advisory 2015-7159.
    #
    
    include("compat.inc");
    
    if (description)
    {
      script_id(83549);
      script_version("2.4");
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_modification_date", value:"2020/06/04");
    
      script_cve_id("CVE-2015-3420");
      script_xref(name:"FEDORA", value:"2015-7159");
    
      script_name(english:"Fedora 20 : dovecot-2.2.16-2.fc20 (2015-7159)");
      script_summary(english:"Checks rpm output for the updated package.");
    
      script_set_attribute(
        attribute:"synopsis", 
        value:"The remote Fedora host is missing a security update."
      );
      script_set_attribute(
        attribute:"description", 
        value:
    "fixes CVE-2015-3420: SSL/TLS handshake failures leading to a crash of
    the login process
    
      - dovecot updated to 2.2.16
    
        - auth: Don't crash if master user login is attempted
          without any configured master=yes passdbs
    
      - Parsing UTF-8 text for mails could have caused broken
        results sometimes if buffering was split in the middle
        of a UTF-8 character. This affected at least searching
        messages.
    
      - String sanitization for some logged output wasn't done
        properly: UTF-8 text could have been truncated wrongly
        or the truncation may not have happened at all.
    
      - fts-lucene: Lookups from virtual mailbox consisting of
        over 32 physical mailboxes could have caused crashes.
    
      - dovecot updated to 2.2.16
    
        - auth: Don't crash if master user login is attempted
          without any configured master=yes passdbs
    
      - Parsing UTF-8 text for mails could have caused broken
        results sometimes if buffering was split in the middle
        of a UTF-8 character. This affected at least searching
        messages.
    
      - String sanitization for some logged output wasn't done
        properly: UTF-8 text could have been truncated wrongly
        or the truncation may not have happened at all.
    
      - fts-lucene: Lookups from virtual mailbox consisting of
        over 32 physical mailboxes could have caused crashes.
    
    Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding
    description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable
    has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible
    without introducing additional issues."
      );
      script_set_attribute(
        attribute:"see_also",
        value:"https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1216057"
      );
      # https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2015-May/158261.html
      script_set_attribute(
        attribute:"see_also",
        value:"http://www.nessus.org/u?8ec481f0"
      );
      script_set_attribute(
        attribute:"solution", 
        value:"Update the affected dovecot package."
      );
      script_set_cvss_base_vector("CVSS2#AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P");
      script_set_cvss3_base_vector("CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H");
    
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_type", value:"local");
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"cpe", value:"p-cpe:/a:fedoraproject:fedora:dovecot");
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"cpe", value:"cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:20");
    
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"patch_publication_date", value:"2015/04/29");
      script_set_attribute(attribute:"plugin_publication_date", value:"2015/05/20");
      script_end_attributes();
    
      script_category(ACT_GATHER_INFO);
      script_copyright(english:"This script is Copyright (C) 2015-2020 Tenable Network Security, Inc.");
      script_family(english:"Fedora Local Security Checks");
    
      script_dependencies("ssh_get_info.nasl");
      script_require_keys("Host/local_checks_enabled", "Host/RedHat/release", "Host/RedHat/rpm-list");
    
      exit(0);
    }
    
    
    include("audit.inc");
    include("global_settings.inc");
    include("rpm.inc");
    
    if (!get_kb_item("Host/local_checks_enabled")) audit(AUDIT_LOCAL_CHECKS_NOT_ENABLED);
    release = get_kb_item("Host/RedHat/release");
    if (isnull(release) || "Fedora" >!< release) audit(AUDIT_OS_NOT, "Fedora");
    os_ver = eregmatch(pattern: "Fedora.*release ([0-9]+)", string:release);
    if (isnull(os_ver)) audit(AUDIT_UNKNOWN_APP_VER, "Fedora");
    os_ver = os_ver[1];
    if (! ereg(pattern:"^20([^0-9]|$)", string:os_ver)) audit(AUDIT_OS_NOT, "Fedora 20.x", "Fedora " + os_ver);
    
    if (!get_kb_item("Host/RedHat/rpm-list")) audit(AUDIT_PACKAGE_LIST_MISSING);
    
    cpu = get_kb_item("Host/cpu");
    if (isnull(cpu)) audit(AUDIT_UNKNOWN_ARCH);
    if ("x86_64" >!< cpu && cpu !~ "^i[3-6]86$") audit(AUDIT_LOCAL_CHECKS_NOT_IMPLEMENTED, "Fedora", cpu);
    
    flag = 0;
    if (rpm_check(release:"FC20", reference:"dovecot-2.2.16-2.fc20")) flag++;
    
    
    if (flag)
    {
      if (report_verbosity > 0) security_warning(port:0, extra:rpm_report_get());
      else security_warning(0);
      exit(0);
    }
    else
    {
      tested = pkg_tests_get();
      if (tested) audit(AUDIT_PACKAGE_NOT_AFFECTED, tested);
      else audit(AUDIT_PACKAGE_NOT_INSTALLED, "dovecot");
    }
    
  • NASL familyFedora Local Security Checks
    NASL idFEDORA_2015-7156.NASL
    descriptionfixes CVE-2015-3420: SSL/TLS handshake failures leading to a crash of the login process - dovecot updated to 2.2.16 - auth: Don
    last seen2020-06-05
    modified2015-05-04
    plugin id83223
    published2015-05-04
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2015-2020 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/83223
    titleFedora 22 : dovecot-2.2.16-2.fc22 (2015-7156)
  • NASL familyFedora Local Security Checks
    NASL idFEDORA_2015-7089.NASL
    descriptionfixes CVE-2015-3420: SSL/TLS handshake failures leading to a crash of the login process - dovecot updated to 2.2.16 - auth: Don
    last seen2020-06-05
    modified2015-05-20
    plugin id83548
    published2015-05-20
    reporterThis script is Copyright (C) 2015-2020 Tenable Network Security, Inc.
    sourcehttps://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/83548
    titleFedora 21 : dovecot-2.2.16-2.fc21 (2015-7089)