CWE-297: Improper Validation of Certificate with Host… | Glexia
CWE-297 (Improper Validation of Certificate with Host Mismatch) weakness overview with consequences, detection methods, mitigations, related CVEs and MITRE ATT&CK…
Glexia's Take · Automated analysis
CWE-297: Improper Validation of Certificate with Host Mismatch
Improper Validation of Certificate with Host Mismatch represents a recurring weakness pattern that can create exploitable paths when design, validation, or implementation controls are missing.
Executive Impact
- Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity: The data read from the system vouched for by the certificate may not be from the expected system.
- Authentication,Other: Other: Trust afforded to the system in question - based on the malicious certificate - may allow for spoofing or redirection attacks.
- Access Control,Other: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity,Other: If the certificate's host-specific data is not properly checked - such as the Common Name (CN) in the Subject or the Subject Alternative Name (SAN) extension of an X.509 certificate - it may be possible for a redirection or spoofing attack to allow a malicious host with a valid certificate to provide data, impersonating a trusted host.
Developer Pattern
CWE-297 is the kind of defect developers can usually prevent with explicit validation, safer framework defaults, and tests that exercise hostile input or unsafe state transitions.
Automation confidence
high confidence from CWE-297, 4.20.
Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.
Official CWE Definition
CWE-297: Improper Validation of Certificate with Host Mismatch
The product communicates with a host that provides a certificate, but the product does not properly ensure that the certificate is actually associated with that host.
Developer And Remediation Guidance
How teams prevent and detect this weakness
Causes
- The following OpenSSL code obtains a certificate and verifies it. Even though the "verify" step returns X509_V_OK, this step does not include checking the Common Name against the name of the host. That is, there is no guarantee that the certificate is for the desired host. The SSL connection could have been established with a malicious host that provided a valid certificate.
Remediation
- Architecture and Design: Fully check the hostname of the certificate and provide the user with adequate information about the nature of the problem and how to proceed.
- Implementation: If certificate pinning is being used, ensure that all relevant properties of the certificate are fully validated before the certificate is pinned, including the hostname.
Detection
- Automated Static Analysis: Automated static analysis, commonly referred to as Static Application Security Testing (SAST), can find some instances of this weakness by analyzing source code (or binary/compiled code) without having to execute it. Typically, this is done by building a model of data flow and control flow, then searching for potentially-vulnerable patterns that connect "sources" (origins of input) with "sinks" (destinations where the data interacts with external components, a lower layer such as the OS, etc.)
- Dynamic Analysis with Manual Results Interpretation: Set up an untrusted endpoint (e.g. a server) with which the product will connect. Create a test certificate that uses an invalid hostname but is signed by a trusted CA and provide this certificate from the untrusted endpoint. If the product performs any operations instead of disconnecting and reporting an error, then this indicates that the hostname is not being checked and the test certificate has been accepted.
- Black Box: When Certificate Pinning is being used in a mobile application, consider using a tool such as Spinner [REF-955]. This methodology might be extensible to other technologies.
Mappings
Related CVEs, CWEs, and ATT&CK context
Related CWEs
ATT&CK Relevance
ATT&CK relevance is shown only when reviewed or responsibly inferred.