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Impersonation and takeover of remote accounts with unnormalized signed activities

High
syuilo published GHSA-2vxv-pv3m-3wvj Jun 2, 2024

Package

Misskey

Affected versions

<= 2024.3.1

Patched versions

2024.5.0

Description

Summary

Misskey doesn't perform proper normalization on the JSON structures of incoming signed ActivityPub activity objects before processing them, allowing threat actors to spoof the contents of signed activities and impersonate the authors of the original activities.

Details

The reporter intends to keep this section undisclosed at least for 30 days after the publication of the advisory and until the remedy has been deployed widely.

PoC

The reporter intends to keep this section undisclosed at least for 30 days after the publication of the advisory and until the remedy has been deployed widely.

Impact

The vulnerability allows a threat actor to impersonate a target remote account and perform spoofed activities of any type attributed to the target account, provided that the threat actor has access to a valid Linked Data Signature by the target account.

There are a number of situations where the threat actor can obtain a valid signature by the target account, including:

  • The target account sends a signed activity to another account and the recipient account's server forwards the activity to a server controlled by the threat actor according to the inbox forwarding mechanism of ActivityPub
  • The target account has joined a relay to which a server controlled by the threat actor subscribes, and sends a signed activity to that relay

Timeline

Date and time Event
2022-02-03 The same kind of vulnerability in Mastodon was disclosed: CVE-2022-24307
2024-04-29Z PeerTube released v6.1, which fixes the same kind of vulnerability
2024-04-29T14:36Z Iceshrimp released v2023.12.7, which fixes the same vulnerability
2024-04-29T18Z This advisory was published
2024-04-29Z Meisskey released v10.102.699-m544 and v11.37.1-20240430023339, which fix the same vulneravility, and published a security advisory
2024-04-29Z Firefish released v20240430, which fixes the same vulnerability
2024-05-09T20:32:38Z Sharkey released v2024.3.3, which fixes the same vulnerability

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
High
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:N

CVE ID

CVE-2024-32983

Weaknesses

No CWEs

Credits