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CVE-2023-6918lowCWE-252

Libssh: missing checks for return values for digests

8Vexday Risk Score

No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.

ssvc Trackcvss 3.7epss 1.4%
exploitation probability
1.4%top 29% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
In short

Libssh doesn't properly check if digest operations succeed, which can cause crashes or use uninitialized memory when the system runs low on memory. This results in failed connections but typically doesn't allow attackers to decrypt data.

Technical detail

The libssh crypto abstraction layer fails to validate return values from message digest operations across different backends (CWE-252). Under low-memory conditions, unchecked failures can lead to NULL dereferences, uninitialized memory usage in key derivation, or crashes; while integrity checks prevent successful exploitation for decryption, the flaw enables denial-of-service through connection termination.

Summary generated and translated by AI from the official description.
A flaw was found in the libssh implements abstract layer for message digest (MD) operations implemented by different supported crypto backends. The return values from these were not properly checked, which could cause low-memory situations failures, NULL dereferences, crashes, or usage of the uninitialized memory as an input for the KDF. In this case, non-matching keys will result in decryption/integrity failures, terminating the connection.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L