CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2017-8850

Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information

Published: May 11, 2017 | Modified: Oct 03, 2019
CVSS 3.x
5.9
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
CVSS 2.x
4.3 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

An issue was discovered on OnePlus One, X, 2, 3, and 3T devices. Due to a lenient updater-script in the OnePlus OTA images, and the fact that both ROMs use the same OTA verification keys, attackers can install HydrogenOS over OxygenOS and vice versa, even on locked bootloaders, which allows for exploitation of vulnerabilities patched on one image but not on the other, in addition to expansion of the attack surface. This vulnerability can be exploited by Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) attackers targeting the update process. This is possible because the update transaction does not occur over TLS (CVE-2016-10370). In addition, physical attackers can reboot the phone into recovery, and then use adb sideload to push the OTA (on OnePlus 3/3T Secure Start-up must be off).

Weakness

The product transmits sensitive or security-critical data in cleartext in a communication channel that can be sniffed by unauthorized actors.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Oxygenos Oneplus * *

Extended Description

Many communication channels can be “sniffed” (monitored) by adversaries during data transmission. For example, in networking, packets can traverse many intermediary nodes from the source to the destination, whether across the internet, an internal network, the cloud, etc. Some actors might have privileged access to a network interface or any link along the channel, such as a router, but they might not be authorized to collect the underlying data. As a result, network traffic could be sniffed by adversaries, spilling security-critical data. Applicable communication channels are not limited to software products. Applicable channels include hardware-specific technologies such as internal hardware networks and external debug channels, supporting remote JTAG debugging. When mitigations are not applied to combat adversaries within the product’s threat model, this weakness significantly lowers the difficulty of exploitation by such adversaries. When full communications are recorded or logged, such as with a packet dump, an adversary could attempt to obtain the dump long after the transmission has occurred and try to “sniff” the cleartext from the recorded communications in the dump itself.

Potential Mitigations

References