CVE-2009-2185 Denial of service in n/a

Medium 5.0 Published 24 Jun 2009 Updated 7 Aug 2024

Remote attackers can crash the IKE daemon by sending crafted X.509 certificates, causing a denial of service in strongSwan and openSwan.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2009-2185?

CVE-2009-2185 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in n/a, published on 24 Jun 2009. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The ASN.1 parser (pluto/asn1.c, libstrongswan/asn1/asn1.c, libstrongswan/asn1/asn1_parser.c) in (a) strongSwan 2.8 before 2.8.10, 4.2 before 4.2.16, and 4.3 before 4.3.2; and (b) openSwan 2.6 before 2.6.22 and 2.4 before 2.4.15 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (pluto IKE daemon crash) via an X.509 certificate with (1) crafted Relative Distinguished Names (RDNs), (2) a crafted UTCTIME string, or (3) a crafted GENERALIZEDTIME string.

Weakness: CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2009-2185?

It affects 2 products.

Linux distribution packages (6)

`openswan` Red Hat:enterprise_linux:5::client	All versions	`0:2.6.14-1.el5_3.3`
`openswan-debuginfo` Red Hat:enterprise_linux:5::client	All versions	`0:2.6.14-1.el5_3.3`
`openswan-doc` Red Hat:enterprise_linux:5::client	All versions	`0:2.6.14-1.el5_3.3`
`openswan` Red Hat:enterprise_linux:5::server	All versions	`0:2.6.14-1.el5_3.3`
`openswan-debuginfo` Red Hat:enterprise_linux:5::server	All versions	`0:2.6.14-1.el5_3.3`
`openswan-doc` Red Hat:enterprise_linux:5::server	All versions	`0:2.6.14-1.el5_3.3`

Products include Strongswan Strongswan, Xelerance Openswan.

How do I fix CVE-2009-2185?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2009-2185 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2009-2185 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2009-2185, DSA-1898-1, GHSA-9g49-v8fv-gvm8, RHSA-2009:1138.