CVE-2025-59154
Openfire’s SASL EXTERNAL mechanism for client TLS authentication contains a vulnerability in how it extracts user identities from X.509 certificates.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.23%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
Openfire is an XMPP server licensed under the Open Source Apache License. Openfire’s SASL EXTERNAL mechanism for client TLS authentication contains a vulnerability in how it extracts user identities from X.509 certificates. Instead of parsing the structured ASN.1 data, the code calls X509Certificate.getSubjectDN().getName() and applies a regex to look for CN=. This method produces a provider-dependent string that does not escape special characters. In SunJSSE (sun.security.x509.X500Name), for example, commas and equals signs inside attribute values are not escaped. As a result, a malicious certificate can embed CN= inside another attribute value (e.g. OU="CN=admin,"). The regex will incorrectly interpret this as a legitimate Common Name and extract admin. If SASL EXTERNAL is enabled and configured to map CNs to user accounts, this allows the attacker to impersonate another user. The fix is included in Openfire 5.0.2 and 5.1.0.
- CVSS 3.1
- 5.9 MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
- EPSS
- 0.23% probability · 14th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-290
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
References
- https://github.com/igniterealtime/Openfire/blob/8d073dda36905da0fdee7cb623c025a01a5cbf6b/xmppserver/src/main/java/org/jivesoftware/util/cert/CNCertificateIdentityMapping.java#L43
- https://github.com/igniterealtime/Openfire/security/advisories/GHSA-w252-645g-87mp
- https://igniterealtime.atlassian.net/browse/OF-3122
- https://igniterealtime.atlassian.net/browse/OF-3123
- https://igniterealtime.atlassian.net/browse/OF-3124
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.