Advisory
|
Vulnerability Intelligence |
Type
|
Authentication Bypass |
CVE
|
CVE-2020-28052 |
Application
|
Bouncy Castle API 1.65/1.66 |
Affected Platforms
|
Java/C# .NET applications |
CVSS Score: 8.1 [High]
Bouncy Castle is a popular Java library to implement cryptographic functionalities in applications. It supports C# and .Net platforms. Recently, an authentication bypass vulnerability was detected in one of the classes handling Bcrypt hashing and is tracked as CVE-2020-28052.
The vulnerability discovered in the OpenBSDBcrypt class has a logical issue in computing the hash matching that allows attackers to evade password checks to bypass authentication into the application. Given below is the code snippet from the form validation method doCheckPassword. It implements a flawed routine to check for the password hash against the stored hash.
[caption id="attachment_9186" align="alignnone" width="652"]
Vulnerable Code[/caption]
Once the attacker bypasses the password check, they don't need a byte-for-byte match with the stored hash value, which enables authentication bypass. Attackers use brute force attacks to crack passwords until the bypass is triggered.
Here’s a list of major applications that use BouncyCastle (Versions that are not verified):
- Google Messages
- Netflix
- Wish App
- Samsung Email
- Xiomi File Manager
- PhonePe
- Amazon Alexa
Impact
- Applications using Bouncy Castle 1.65 or 1.66 are vulnerable to authentication bypass vulnerability.
- Attackers can bypass the authentication mechanism implemented by the affected Bouncy Castle library in the application.
- Authentication bypass can lead to unauthorized information disclosure
- Bcrypt hashing based authentications are widely used in web applications and APIs, this vulnerability compromises the security of such systems if not checked.
Mitigation
Bouncy Castle 1.67 (released 11/1/2020) provides a fix for this vulnerability.
[Versions prior to 1.65 are not affected] 
