CVE-2021-23214 (published 2022-03-04T16:15Z)

When the server is configured to use trust authentication with a clientcert requirement or to use cert authentication, a man-in-the-middle attacker can inject arbitrary SQL queries when a connection is first established, despite the use of SSL certificate verification and encryption.

Severity: MEDIUM
CVSS v2 base score: 5.1 (AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P)
CVSS v3 base score: 8.1, HIGH (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H)

Weakness information:
cwe_id: CWE-89
cwe_name: Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an SQL Command ('SQL Injection')
description: The product constructs all or part of an SQL command using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the intended SQL command when it is sent to a downstream component. Without sufficient removal or quoting of SQL syntax in user-controllable inputs, the generated SQL query can cause those inputs to be interpreted as SQL instead of ordinary user data.
extended_description: 
            
            
         
         

Fix information:
repo_url: https://github.com/postgres/postgres
commit_details: repo_url: https://github.com/postgres/postgres
author: Tom Lane
author_date: 2021-11-08 11:01:43-05:00
msg: Reject extraneous data after SSL or GSS encryption handshake.

The server collects up to a bufferload of data whenever it reads data
from the client socket.  When SSL or GSS encryption is requested
during startup, any additional data received with the initial
request message remained in the buffer, and would be treated as
already-decrypted data once the encryption handshake completed.
Thus, a man-in-the-middle with the ability to inject data into the
TCP connection could stuff some cleartext data into the start of
a supposedly encryption-protected database session.

This could be abused to send faked SQL commands to the server,
although that would only work if the server did not demand any
authentication data.  (However, a server relying on SSL certificate
authentication might well not do so.)

To fix, throw a protocol-violation error if the internal buffer
is not empty after the encryption handshake.

Our thanks to Jacob Champion for reporting this problem.

Security: CVE-2021-23214
repository: repo_url: https://github.com/postgres/postgres
repo_name: postgres/postgres
description: Mirror of the official PostgreSQL GIT repository. Note that this is just a *mirror* - we don't work with pull requests on github. To contribute, please see https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Submitting_a_Patch
repo_language: C
owner: postgres
file_changes: filename: pqcomm.c
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -1141,6 +1141,18 @@ pq_discardbytes(size_t len)
 	return 0;
 }
 
+/* --------------------------------
+ *		pq_buffer_has_data		- is any buffered data available to read?
+ *
+ * This will *not* attempt to read more data.
+ * --------------------------------
+ */
+bool
+pq_buffer_has_data(void)
+{
+	return (PqRecvPointer < PqRecvLength);
+}
+
 
 /* --------------------------------
  *		pq_startmsgread - begin reading a message from the client.

programming_language: C
filename: postmaster.c
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -2110,6 +2110,18 @@ retry1:
 			return STATUS_ERROR;
 #endif
 
+		/*
+		 * At this point we should have no data already buffered.  If we do,
+		 * it was received before we performed the SSL handshake, so it wasn't
+		 * encrypted and indeed may have been injected by a man-in-the-middle.
+		 * We report this case to the client.
+		 */
+		if (pq_buffer_has_data())
+			ereport(FATAL,
+					(errcode(ERRCODE_PROTOCOL_VIOLATION),
+					 errmsg("received unencrypted data after SSL request"),
+					 errdetail("This could be either a client-software bug or evidence of an attempted man-in-the-middle attack.")));
+
 		/*
 		 * regular startup packet, cancel, etc packet should follow, but not
 		 * another SSL negotiation request, and a GSS request should only
@@ -2142,6 +2154,18 @@ retry1:
 			return STATUS_ERROR;
 #endif
 
+		/*
+		 * At this point we should have no data already buffered.  If we do,
+		 * it was received before we performed the GSS handshake, so it wasn't
+		 * encrypted and indeed may have been injected by a man-in-the-middle.
+		 * We report this case to the client.
+		 */
+		if (pq_buffer_has_data())
+			ereport(FATAL,
+					(errcode(ERRCODE_PROTOCOL_VIOLATION),
+					 errmsg("received unencrypted data after GSSAPI encryption request"),
+					 errdetail("This could be either a client-software bug or evidence of an attempted man-in-the-middle attack.")));
+
 		/*
 		 * regular startup packet, cancel, etc packet should follow, but not
 		 * another GSS negotiation request, and an SSL request should only

programming_language: C
filename: libpq.h
change_type: ModificationType.MODIFY
diff: @@ -79,6 +79,7 @@ extern int	pq_getmessage(StringInfo s, int maxlen);
 extern int	pq_getbyte(void);
 extern int	pq_peekbyte(void);
 extern int	pq_getbyte_if_available(unsigned char *c);
+extern bool pq_buffer_has_data(void);
 extern int	pq_putmessage_v2(char msgtype, const char *s, size_t len);
 extern bool pq_check_connection(void);
 

programming_language: C