CVE-2022-31802 - Partial String Comparison

Severity

98%

Complexity

39%

Confidentiality

98%

In CODESYS Gateway Server V2 for versions prior to V2.3.9.38 only a part of the the specified password is been compared to the real CODESYS Gateway password. An attacker may perform authentication by specifying a small password that matches the corresponding part of the longer real CODESYS Gateway password.

CVSS 3.1 Base Score 9.8. CVSS Attack Vector: network. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).

CVSS 2.0 Base Score 7.5. CVSS Attack Vector: network. CVSS Attack Complexity: low. CVSS Vector: (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P).

Demo Examples

Partial String Comparison

CWE-187

This example defines a fixed username and password. The AuthenticateUser() function is intended to accept a username and a password from an untrusted user, and check to ensure that it matches the username and password. If the username and password match, AuthenticateUser() is intended to indicate that authentication succeeded.


               
}/* Ignore CWE-259 (hard-coded password) and CWE-309 (use of password system for authentication) for this example. */
}
return(AUTH_FAIL);
return(AUTH_SUCCESS);
return(AUTH_FAIL);
}
ExitError("Usage: Provide a username and password");
DoAuthenticatedTask(argv[1]);
ExitError("Authentication failed");

In AuthenticateUser(), the strncmp() call uses the string length of an attacker-provided inPass parameter in order to determine how many characters to check in the password. So, if the attacker only provides a password of length 1, the check will only examine the first byte of the application's password before determining success.

As a result, this partial comparison leads to improper authentication (CWE-287).

Any of these passwords would still cause authentication to succeed for the "admin" user:


               
pass

This significantly reduces the search space for an attacker, making brute force attacks more feasible.

The same problem also applies to the username, so values such as "a" and "adm" will succeed for the username.

While this demonstrative example may not seem realistic, see the Observed Examples for CVE entries that effectively reflect this same weakness.

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