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Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2015 11:04:07 +0100
From: Sven Schwedas <sven.schwedas@....at>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: CVE request: xchat/hexchat don't properly verify
 SSL certificates

On 2015-01-29 20:24, Sam Dodrill wrote:
> A lot of the time IRC networks will not pay for a verified SSL cert due to
> the fact that the kind of SSL cert they would need (a wildcard one) is
> financially prohibitive.

IRC servers can consider using CACert.org or their own CA and adding
that to clients; Let's Encrypt seems to be making progress too, so this
problem will hopefully solve itself in a few months. That shouldn't be a
reason to ship a broken TLS implementation.

> I don't think this is a security bug with hexchat
> more a symptom of the fact that SSL combines encryption and identity
> verification where sometimes people only want the former.

What's the point of encryption without identity verification, anyway?
MITM attacks are laughably trivial there.

> 
> On Thu Jan 29 2015 at 10:58:51 AM Marc Deslauriers <
> marc.deslauriers@...onical.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 2015-01-29 01:52 PM, Vincent Danen wrote:
>>> As reported [1]:
>>>
>>> XChat did not verify that the server hostname matched the domain name in
>> the
>>> subject's Common Name (CN) or subjectAltName field in X.509
>> certificates. This
>>> could allow a man-in-the-middle attacker to spoof an SSL server if they
>> had a
>>> certificate that was valid for any domain name.
>>>
>>> The same code is used in hexchat.
>>>
>>> This was initially reported to hexchat in 2013 [2] and fixed last
>> November [3].
>>> I'm not sure if it should receive a 2013 or a 2014 CVE.  Can one be
>> assigned to
>>> this?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> [1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1081839
>>> [2] https://github.com/hexchat/hexchat/issues/524
>>> [3]
>>> https://github.com/hexchat/hexchat/commit/c9b63f7f9be01692b03fa15275135a
>> 4910a7e02d
>>>
>>
>> Looks like XChat-GNOME is vulnerable also.
>>
>> Marc.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Marc Deslauriers
>> Ubuntu Security Engineer     | http://www.ubuntu.com/
>> Canonical Ltd.               | http://www.canonical.com/
>>
> 

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen, / Best Regards,
Sven Schwedas
Systemadministrator
TAO Beratungs- und Management GmbH | Lendplatz 45 | A - 8020 Graz
Mail/XMPP: sven.schwedas@....at | +43 (0)680 301 7167
http://software.tao.at


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