Akka.NET is a .NET port of the Akka project from the Scala / Java community. In all versions of Akka.Remote from v1.2.0 to v1.5.51, TLS could be enabled via our akka.remote.dot-netty.tcp transport and this would correctly enforce private key validation on the server-side of inbound connections. Akka.Remote, however, never asked the outbound-connecting client to present ITS certificate - therefore its possible for untrusted parties to connect to a private keyd Akka.NET cluster and begin communicating with it without any certificate. The issue here is that for certificate-based authentication to work properly, ensuring that all members of the Akka.Remote network are secured with the same private key, Akka.Remote needed to implement mutual TLS. This was not the case before Akka.NET v1.5.52. Those who run Akka.NET inside a private network that they fully control or who were never using TLS in the first place are now affected by the bug. However, those who use TLS to secure their networks must upgrade to Akka.NET V1.5.52 or later. One patch forces fail fast semantics if TLS is enabled but the private key is missing or invalid. Previous versions would only check that once connection attempts occurred. The second patch, a critical fix, enforces mutual TLS (mTLS) by default, so both parties must be keyed using the same certificate. As a workaround, avoid exposing the application publicly to avoid the vulnerability having a practical impact on ones application. However, upgrading to version 1.5.52 is still recommended by the maintainers.
This attack-focused weakness is caused by incorrectly implemented authentication schemes that are subject to spoofing attacks.