Strongswan
CVE-2023-41913
CRITICAL
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
ASVS 5.0
V15 - Secure Coding and Architecture Buffer copy size validation
MITRE ATT&CK
1 technique across 1 tactic: Execution The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Impact | CVSS score of 9.8 (CRITICAL). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction not required. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | A remote attacker could overflow a buffer to corrupt adjacent memory by sending crafted requests to the affected application. No authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
strongSwan before 5.9.12 has a buffer overflow and possible unauthenticated remote code execution via a DH public value that exceeds the internal buffer in charon-tkm's DH proxy. Rated critical severity (CVSS 9.8), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Always validate buffer sizes before copy operations. Use bounded functions (strncpy, snprintf). Enable compiler protections.
Affects your stack
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Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified as Buffer Copy without Size Check (CWE-120), which allows attackers to overflow a buffer to corrupt adjacent memory. strongSwan before 5.9.12 has a buffer overflow and possible unauthenticated remote code execution via a DH public value that exceeds the internal buffer in charon-tkm's DH proxy. The earliest affected version is 5.3.0. An attack can occur via a crafted IKE_SA_INIT message. Affected products include: Strongswan. Version information: before 5.9.12.
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- Exploit and PoC references, threat intelligence from 22 sources
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
strongSwan before 5.9.12 has a buffer overflow and possible unauthenticated remote code execution via a DH public value that exceeds the internal buffer in charon-tkm's DH proxy. The earliest affected version is 5.3.0. An attack can occur via a crafted IKE_SA_INIT message.
Threat Intelligence Overview
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
A buffer overflow occurs when a program writes more data to a memory buffer than it was allocated to hold, causing the excess data to spill into adjacent memory regions.
Remote Code Execution represents the critical moment when an attacker successfully runs arbitrary code on a target system without physical access.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
More in Strongswan
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strongSwan 5.2.2 and 5.3.0 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (daemon crash) or execute arbitrary code
strongSwan 5.9.8 and 5.9.9 potentially allows remote code execution because it uses a variable named "public" for two di
The is_asn1 function in strongSwan 4.1.11 through 5.0.4 does not properly validate the return value of the asn1_length f
The gmp plugin in strongSwan before 5.5.3 does not properly validate RSA public keys before calling mpz_powm_sec, which
The ASN.1 parser in strongSwan before 5.5.3 improperly handles CHOICE types when the x509 plugin is enabled, which allow
The gmp plugin in strongSwan before 5.6.0 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference
The GMP Plugin in strongSwan 4.2.0 through 4.6.3 allows remote attackers to bypass authentication via a (1) empty or (2)
Use-after-free in strongSwan's IKEv2 Multi-Key Exchange (Multi-KE, RFC 9370) implementation is triggered when two authen
Denial of service via infinite loop in strongSwan's x509 plugin affects all deployments that process X.509 attribute cer
Denial of service via NULL-pointer dereference in strongSwan's x509 plugin affects versions 4.2.0 through 6.0.x, trigger
strongMan's credential encryption uses a static initialization vector with AES-CTR mode, causing all database fields to
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub
Exploit-DB