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PostgresNIO processes unencrypted bytes from man-in-the-middle

Low severity GitHub Reviewed Published May 4, 2023 in vapor/postgres-nio • Updated Nov 6, 2023

Package

swift github.com/vapor/postgres-nio (Swift)

Affected versions

< 1.14.2

Patched versions

1.14.2

Description

Impact

Any user of PostgresNIO connecting to servers with TLS enabled is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attacker injecting false responses to the client's first few queries, despite the use of TLS certificate verification and encryption.

The remaining text in this section is quoted verbatim from PostgreSQL's CVE-2021-23222 advisory:

If more preconditions hold, the attacker can exfiltrate the client's password or other confidential data that might be transmitted early in a session. The attacker must have a way to trick the client's intended server into making the confidential data accessible to the attacker. A known implementation having that property is a PostgreSQL configuration vulnerable to CVE-2021-23214. As with any exploitation of CVE-2021-23214, the server must be using trust authentication with a clientcert requirement or using cert authentication. To disclose a password, the client must be in possession of a password, which is atypical when using an authentication configuration vulnerable to CVE-2021-23214. The attacker must have some other way to access the server to retrieve the exfiltrated data (a valid, unprivileged login account would be sufficient).

Patches

The vulnerability is addressed in PostgresNIO versions starting from 1.14.2 via 2df54bc94607f44584ae6ffa74e3cd754fffafc7, which required additional support from SwiftNIO.

Workarounds

There are no known workarounds for unpatched users.

Additional Credits

Special thanks to PostgreSQL's Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> for reporting this issue!

References

References

@gwynne gwynne published to vapor/postgres-nio May 4, 2023
Published by the National Vulnerability Database May 9, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database May 10, 2023
Reviewed May 10, 2023
Last updated Nov 6, 2023

Severity

Low

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

EPSS score

0.274%
(69th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-31136

GHSA ID

GHSA-9cfh-vx93-84vv

Source code

Credits

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