Debian DSA-1719-1 : gnutls13 - design flaw

medium Nessus Plugin ID 35637

Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security-related update.

Description

Martin von Gagern discovered that GNUTLS, an implementation of the TLS/SSL protocol, handles verification of X.509 certificate chains incorrectly if a self-signed certificate is configured as a trusted certificate. This could cause clients to accept forged server certificates as genuine. (CVE-2008-4989 )

In addition, this update tightens the checks for X.509v1 certificates which causes GNUTLS to reject certain certificate chains it accepted before. (In certificate chain processing, GNUTLS does not recognize X.509v1 certificates as valid unless explicitly requested by the application.)

Solution

Upgrade the gnutls13 packages.

For the stable distribution (etch), this problem has been fixed in version 1.4.4-3+etch3.

See Also

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=505360

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-4989

https://www.debian.org/security/2009/dsa-1719

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 35637

File Name: debian_DSA-1719.nasl

Version: 1.12

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 2/12/2009

Updated: 1/4/2021

Supported Sensors: Agentless Assessment, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.3

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:gnutls13, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:4.0

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/Debian/release, Host/Debian/dpkg-l

Patch Publication Date: 2/10/2009

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2008-4989

CWE: 255

DSA: 1719