what you don't know can hurt you
Home Files News &[SERVICES_TAB]About Contact Add New

Miranda 0.8.16 / 0.9.0 Silent TLS Fail

Miranda 0.8.16 / 0.9.0 Silent TLS Fail
Posted Mar 17, 2010
Authored by Jan Schejbal

Miranda versions 0.8.16 and 0.9.0 alpha build #6 Unicode and SVN rev. 11383 suffer from a silent TLS failure.

tags | advisory
SHA-256 | 60e1be99e38fdbb517c8a010f48eb428d9889738251101078a67a66f1c7bbd9e

Miranda 0.8.16 / 0.9.0 Silent TLS Fail

Change Mirror Download
Summary:
Under certain conditions, Miranda ignores the "Use TLS" setting in
Jabber accounts and uses an unencrypted connection.

Affected: Miranda IM (instant messenger), at least versions 0.8.16,
0.9.0 alpha build #6 Unicode and SVN rev. 11383

Description:
If the following conditions are met:
- "Use TLS" is enabled in the jabber account settings (Network -
Jabber - Account),

- "Validate SSL certificates" is enabled in the Network settings

- "Disable SASL authentication" is enabled in the advanced jabber
settings (Network - Jabber - Advanced, Miscellaneous - Server options)

Miranda will silently connect to the server without using TLS, sending
all data in plain.


Impact: This issue allows eavesdropping and impersonation attacks on the
connection to the XMPP/Jabber server, even if "Use TLS" is enabled and
the user assumes the connection to be secure.


Workaround:
Uncheck "Disable SASL authentication" and restart Miranda.
Make sure the server certificate is trusted (via the Windows certificate
store), or your connections will fail.


Disclosure:
The bug was reported to the authors via their bug tracker.

I disclose the issue to the public without waiting for a patch because

a) no harm is expected from public knowledge of this issue, even as no
patch exists

b) an easy workaround (fixing the settings) exists


It seems that this issue was already reported by another user in 2009:
http://code.google.com/p/miranda/issues/detail?id=152

According to that, the "Disable SASL" setting suppresses TLS and no
warning is given to the user.

Fix:
Ensure that if "Use TLS" is checked, failure to establish a TLS-secured
connection is a fatal error. No data should be transferred and the user
should be warned about this.

*Additionally*, make "Use TLS" and "Disable SASL" mutually exclusive and
change the misleading name of the "Disable SASL" setting.


written by: Jan Schejbal

Thanks to Protogenes and Nico Haase for testing and confirming the issue.



Kind regards,
Jan Schejbal
Login or Register to add favorites

File Archive:

March 2024

  • Su
  • Mo
  • Tu
  • We
  • Th
  • Fr
  • Sa
  • 1
    Mar 1st
    16 Files
  • 2
    Mar 2nd
    0 Files
  • 3
    Mar 3rd
    0 Files
  • 4
    Mar 4th
    32 Files
  • 5
    Mar 5th
    28 Files
  • 6
    Mar 6th
    42 Files
  • 7
    Mar 7th
    17 Files
  • 8
    Mar 8th
    13 Files
  • 9
    Mar 9th
    0 Files
  • 10
    Mar 10th
    0 Files
  • 11
    Mar 11th
    15 Files
  • 12
    Mar 12th
    19 Files
  • 13
    Mar 13th
    21 Files
  • 14
    Mar 14th
    38 Files
  • 15
    Mar 15th
    15 Files
  • 16
    Mar 16th
    0 Files
  • 17
    Mar 17th
    0 Files
  • 18
    Mar 18th
    10 Files
  • 19
    Mar 19th
    32 Files
  • 20
    Mar 20th
    46 Files
  • 21
    Mar 21st
    16 Files
  • 22
    Mar 22nd
    13 Files
  • 23
    Mar 23rd
    0 Files
  • 24
    Mar 24th
    0 Files
  • 25
    Mar 25th
    12 Files
  • 26
    Mar 26th
    31 Files
  • 27
    Mar 27th
    19 Files
  • 28
    Mar 28th
    42 Files
  • 29
    Mar 29th
    0 Files
  • 30
    Mar 30th
    0 Files
  • 31
    Mar 31st
    0 Files

Top Authors In Last 30 Days

File Tags

Systems

packet storm

© 2022 Packet Storm. All rights reserved.

Services
Security Services
Hosting By
Rokasec
close