OpenPKG Security Advisory

Publisher Name:          OpenPKG GmbH
Publisher Home:          http://openpkg.com/

Advisory Id (public):    OpenPKG-SA-2003.013
Advisory Type:           OpenPKG Security Advisory (SA)
Advisory Directory:      http://openpkg.com/go/OpenPKG-SA
Advisory Document:       http://openpkg.com/go/OpenPKG-SA-2003.013
Advisory Published:      2010-02-09 17:21 UTC

Issue Id (internal):     OpenPKG-SI-20030219.02
Issue First Created:     2003-02-19
Issue Last Modified:     2006-11-28
Issue Revision:          05


Subject Name:            OpenSSL
Subject Summary:         Cryptography and SSL/TLS Toolkit
Subject Home:            http://www.openssl.org/
Subject Versions:        * <= 0.9.7

Vulnerability Id:        CVE-2003-0078
Vulnerability Scope:     global (not OpenPKG specific)

Attack Feasibility:      run-time
Attack Vector:           
Attack Impact:           identity fraud, exposure of sensitive information

Description:
    In an upcoming CRYPTO 2003 paper, Brice Canvel (EPFL), Alain
    Hiltgen (UBS), Serge Vaudenay (EPFL), and Martin Vuagnoux (EPFL,
    Ilion) describe and demonstrate a timing-based attack on SSL/TLS
    with CBC ciphersuites. According to an OpenSSL security advisory
    [0], the OpenSSL implementation is vulnerable to this attack.
    
    The attack assumes that multiple SSL/TLS connections involve a common
    fixed plaintext block, such as a password. An active attacker can
    substitute specifically made-up ciphertext blocks for blocks sent
    by legitimate SSL/TLS parties and measure the time until a response
    arrives. SSL/TLS includes data authentication to ensure that such
    modified ciphertext blocks will be rejected by the peer (and the
    connection aborted), but the attacker may be able to use timing
    observations to distinguish between two different error cases, namely
    block cipher padding errors and MAC verification errors.
    
    This is sufficient for an adaptive attack that finally can obtain the
    complete plaintext block. Although this cannot be easily exploited,
    because the attack requires the ability to be a man-in-the-middle,
    repeated communications that have a common plaintext block, decoding
    failures not signaling problems on the client and server side, and
    a network between the attacker and the server sufficient enough to
    reasonably observe timing differences.
    
    OpenSSL version since 0.9.6c supposedly treat block cipher padding
    errors like MAC verification errors during record decryption [1], but
    MAC verification was still skipped after detection of a padding error,
    which allowed the timing attack.

References:
    [0] http://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20030219.txt
    [1] http://www.openssl.org/~bodo/tls-cbc.txt
    [2] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2003-0078
    [3] http://www.openpkg.org/tutorial.html#regular-source
    [4] http://www.openpkg.org/tutorial.html#regular-binary
    [5] ftp://ftp.openpkg.org/release/1.1/UPD/openssl-0.9.6g-1.1.1.src.rpm
    [6] ftp://ftp.openpkg.org/release/1.2/UPD/openssl-0.9.7-1.2.1.src.rpm
    [7] ftp://ftp.openpkg.org/release/1.1/UPD/
    [8] ftp://ftp.openpkg.org/release/1.2/UPD/
    [9] http://www.openpkg.org/security.html#signature


Primary Package Name:    openssl
Primary Package Home:    http://openpkg.org/go/package/openssl

Affected Distribution:   Affected Branch:  Affected Package:
OpenPKG Community        1.1-SOLID         openssl-0.9.6g-1.1.0
OpenPKG Community        1.2-SOLID         openssl-0.9.7-1.2.0
OpenPKG Community        CURRENT           openssl-0.9.7-20030111

Corrected Distribution:  Corrected Branch: Corrected Package:
OpenPKG Community        1.1-SOLID         openssl-0.9.6g-1.1.1
OpenPKG Community        1.2-SOLID         openssl-0.9.7-1.2.1
OpenPKG Community        CURRENT           openssl-0.9.7a-20030219