CVE-2023-6918
Libssh: missing checks for return values for digests
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
Affected products
Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9Want to know if your infrastructure is exposed to this?
Talk to TrueHacking →References
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:2504https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:3233https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-6918https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2254997https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/LZQVUHWVWRH73YBXUQJOD6CKHDQBU3DM/https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/MKQRBF3DWMWPH36LBCOBUTSIZRTPEZXB/https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20250214-0009/https://www.libssh.org/2023/12/18/libssh-0-10-6-and-libssh-0-9-8-security-releases/https://www.libssh.org/security/advisories/CVE-2023-6918.txt