CVE-2023-21405

Knud from Fraktal.fi has found a flaw in some Axis Network Door Controllers and Axis Network Intercoms when communicating over OSDP, highlighting that the OSDP message parser crashes the pacsiod process, causing a temporary unavailability of the door-controlling functionalities meaning that doors cannot be opened or closed. No sensitive or customer data can be extracted as the Axis device is not further compromised. Please refer to the Axis security advisory for more information, mitigation and affected products and software versions.

Weakness

The product receives input that is expected to be well-formed - i.e., to comply with a certain syntax - but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input complies with the syntax.

Affected Software

Extended Description

Often, complex inputs are expected to follow a particular syntax, which is either assumed by the input itself, or declared within metadata such as headers. The syntax could be for data exchange formats, markup languages, or even programming languages. When untrusted input is not properly validated for the expected syntax, attackers could cause parsing failures, trigger unexpected errors, or expose latent vulnerabilities that might not be directly exploitable if the input had conformed to the syntax.

Potential Mitigations

• Assume all input is malicious. Use an “accept known good” input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
• When performing input validation, consider all potentially relevant properties, including length, type of input, the full range of acceptable values, missing or extra inputs, syntax, consistency across related fields, and conformance to business rules. As an example of business rule logic, “boat” may be syntactically valid because it only contains alphanumeric characters, but it is not valid if the input is only expected to contain colors such as “red” or “blue.”
• Do not rely exclusively on looking for malicious or malformed inputs. This is likely to miss at least one undesirable input, especially if the code’s environment changes. This can give attackers enough room to bypass the intended validation. However, denylists can be useful for detecting potential attacks or determining which inputs are so malformed that they should be rejected outright.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/66.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/676.html

References

• https://www.axis.com/dam/public/7f/3a/ed/cve-2023-21405-en-US-407244.pdf
• https://www.axis.com/dam/public/7f/3a/ed/cve-2023-21405-en-US-407244.pdf