CVE-2022-4967 Auth bypass in strongSwan

High 7.7 Published 13 May 2024 Updated 13 Feb 2025

Attackers can bypass authentication in strongSwan by using any trusted certificate to claim arbitrary identities, potentially gaining unauthorized access.

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

What is CVE-2022-4967?

CVE-2022-4967 is a high-severity authentication bypass vulnerability in strongSwan, published on 13 May 2024. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

strongSwan versions 5.9.2 through 5.9.5 are affected by authorization bypass through improper validation of certificate with host mismatch (CWE-297). When certificates are used to authenticate clients in TLS-based EAP methods, the IKE or EAP identity supplied by a client is not enforced to be contained in the client's certificate. So clients can authenticate with any trusted certificate and claim an arbitrary IKE/EAP identity as their own. This is problematic if the identity is used to make policy decisions. A fix was released in strongSwan version 5.9.6 in August 2022 (e4b4aabc4996fc61c37deab7858d07bc4d220136).

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-4967?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Strongswan Strongswan.

How do I fix CVE-2022-4967?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, and rotate credentials and sessions that may have been exposed. More about Authentication bypass.

Is CVE-2022-4967 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-4967 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-4967, GHSA-2hrc-c28p-9f59, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-4967, USN-6772-1.