CVE-2014-2567 (published 2014-03-21T10:55Z)

The OpenConnectionTask::handleStateHelper function in Imap/Tasks/OpenConnectionTask.cpp in Trojita before 0.4.1 allows man-in-the-middle attackers to trigger use of cleartext for saving a message into a (1) sent or (2) draft folder via a PREAUTH response that prevents later use of the STARTTLS command.

Severity: MEDIUM
CVSS v2 base score: 4.3 (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N)

Weakness information:
cwe_id: CWE-200
cwe_name: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
description: The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.
extended_description: 
	   There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker.  Some kinds of sensitive information include:
       
         private, personal information, such as personal messages, financial data, health records, geographic location, or contact details
         system status and environment, such as the operating system and installed packages
		 business secrets and intellectual property
		 network status and configuration
		 the product's own code or internal state
         metadata, e.g. logging of connections or message headers
		 indirect information, such as a discrepancy between two internal operations that can be observed by an outsider
       
	    Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected.  These parties include:
               
                  the product's own users
                  people or organizations whose information is created or used by the product, even if they are not direct product users
		  the product's administrators, including the admins of the system(s) and/or networks on which the product operates
                  the developer
               
	    Information exposures can occur in different ways:
               
                  the code explicitly inserts sensitive information into resources or messages that are intentionally made accessible to unauthorized actors, but should not contain the information - i.e., the information should have been "scrubbed" or "sanitized"
                  a different weakness or mistake indirectly inserts the sensitive information into resources, such as a web script error revealing the full system path of the program.
                  the code manages resources that intentionally contain sensitive information, but the resources are unintentionally made accessible to unauthorized actors. In this case, the information exposure is resultant - i.e., a different weakness enabled the access to the information in the first place.
               
	    It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an "information exposure," but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read.  CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.
         
         

Fix information:
repo_url: https://github.com/jktjkt/trojita
commit_details: repo_url: https://github.com/jktjkt/trojita
author: Jan Kundrát
author_date: 2014-03-18 22:38:39-04:00
msg: IMAP: refuse to work when STARTTLS is required but server sends PREAUTH

Oops, we cannot send STARTTLS when the connection is already authenticated.
This is serious enough to warrant an error; an attacker might be going after a
plaintext of a message we're going to APPEND, etc.

Thanks to Arnt Gulbrandsen on the imap-protocol ML for asking what happens when
we're configured to request STARTTLS and a PREAUTH is received, and to Michael M
Slusarz for starting that discussion.

Hope the error message is readable enough.

CVE: CVE-2014-2567
repository: repo_url: https://github.com/jktjkt/trojita
repo_name: jktjkt/trojita
description: MIRROR: A fast and lightweight Qt IMAP e-mail client
repo_language: C++
owner: jktjkt
file_changes: filename: OpenConnectionTask.cpp
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -153,6 +153,17 @@ bool OpenConnectionTask::handleStateHelper(const Imap::Responses::State *const r
     {
         switch (resp->kind) {
         case PREAUTH:
+            if (model->m_startTls) {
+                // Oops, we cannot send STARTTLS when the connection is already authenticated.
+                // This is serious enough to warrant an error; an attacker might be going after a plaintext
+                // of a message we're going to APPEND, etc.
+                // Thanks to Arnt Gulbrandsen on the imap-protocol ML for asking what happens when we're configured
+                // to request STARTTLS and a PREAUTH is received, and to Michael M Slusarz for starting that discussion.
+                logout(tr("Configuration requires sending STARTTLS, but the IMAP server greets us with PREAUTH. "
+                          "Encryption cannot be established. If this configuration worked previously, someone "
+                          "is after your data and they are pretty smart."));
+                return true;
+            }
             // Cool, we're already authenticated. Now, let's see if we have to issue CAPABILITY or if we already know that
             if (model->accessParser(parser).capabilitiesFresh) {
                 // We're alsmost done here, apart from compression

programming_language: C++
filename: test_Imap_Tasks_OpenConnection.cpp
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -129,6 +129,19 @@ void ImapModelOpenConnectionTest::testPreauthWithCapability()
     QVERIFY(startTlsUpgradeSpy->isEmpty());
 }
 
+/** @short What happens when the server responds with PREAUTH and we want STARTTLS? */
+void ImapModelOpenConnectionTest::testPreauthWithStartTlsWanted()
+{
+    cleanup(); init(true); // yuck, but I can't come up with anything better...
+
+    cEmpty();
+    cServer("* PREAUTH hi there\r\n");
+    QCOMPARE(failedSpy->size(), 1);
+    QVERIFY(completedSpy->isEmpty());
+    QVERIFY(authSpy->isEmpty());
+    QVERIFY(startTlsUpgradeSpy->isEmpty());
+}
+
 /** @short Test for obtaining capability and logging in without any STARTTLS */
 void ImapModelOpenConnectionTest::testOk()
 {

programming_language: C++
filename: test_Imap_Tasks_OpenConnection.h
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ private slots:
 
     void testPreauth();
     void testPreauthWithCapability();
+    void testPreauthWithStartTlsWanted();
 
     void testOk();
     void testOkWithCapability();

programming_language: C++