SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityModified

CVE-2023-43631

An attacker could easily add their own keys and gain full control over the system without triggering the “measured boot” mechanism implemented by EVE OS, and without marking the device as “UUD” (“Unknown Update Detected”).

HIGH 8.8EPSS 0.16%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.16%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

On boot, the Pillar eve container checks for the existence and content of “/config/authorized_keys”. If the file is present, and contains a supported public key, the container will go on to open port 22 and enable sshd with the given keys as the authorized keys for root login. An attacker could easily add their own keys and gain full control over the system without triggering the “measured boot” mechanism implemented by EVE OS, and without marking the device as “UUD” (“Unknown Update Detected”). This is because the “/config” partition is not protected by “measured boot”, it is mutable, and it is not encrypted in any way. An attacker can gain full control over the device without changing the PCR values, thus not triggering the “measured boot” mechanism, and having full access to the vault. Note: This issue was partially fixed in these commits (after disclosure to Zededa), where the config partition measurement was added to PCR13: • aa3501d6c57206ced222c33aea15a9169d629141 • 5fef4d92e75838cc78010edaed5247dfbdae1889. This issue was made viable in version 9.0.0 when the calculation was moved to PCR14 but it was not included in the measured boot.

CVSS 3.1
8.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS
0.16% probability · 5th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-522, CWE-922
Affected
linuxfoundation/edge virtualization engine
Source
cve@asrg.io

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.