Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature Affecting strongswan package, versions <5.7.0-1
Threat Intelligence
The probability is the direct output of the EPSS model, and conveys an overall sense of the threat of exploitation in the wild. The percentile measures the EPSS probability relative to all known EPSS scores. Note: This data is updated daily, relying on the latest available EPSS model version. Check out the EPSS documentation for more details.
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Test your applications- Snyk IDSNYK-DEBIAN14-STRONGSWAN-11768812
- published10 Aug 2025
- disclosed26 Sept 2018
Introduced: 26 Sep 2018
CVE-2018-16152 (opens in a new tab)How to fix?
Upgrade Debian:14 strongswan to version 5.7.0-1 or higher.
NVD Description
Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream strongswan package and not the strongswan package as distributed by Debian.
See How to fix? for Debian:14 relevant fixed versions and status.
In verify_emsa_pkcs1_signature() in gmp_rsa_public_key.c in the gmp plugin in strongSwan 4.x and 5.x before 5.7.0, the RSA implementation based on GMP does not reject excess data in the digestAlgorithm.parameters field during PKCS#1 v1.5 signature verification. Consequently, a remote attacker can forge signatures when small public exponents are being used, which could lead to impersonation when only an RSA signature is used for IKEv2 authentication. This is a variant of CVE-2006-4790 and CVE-2014-1568.
References
- https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-16152
- https://www.strongswan.org/blog/2018/09/24/strongswan-vulnerability-(cve-2018-16151,-cve-2018-16152).html
- https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-16152
- https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4305
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/09/msg00032.html
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201811-16
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-11/msg00077.html
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-12/msg00001.html
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-03/msg00047.html
- http://people.ubuntu.com/~ubuntu-security/cve/CVE-2018-16152
- https://usn.ubuntu.com/3771-1/
- https://www.strongswan.org/blog/2018/09/24/strongswan-vulnerability-%28cve-2018-16151%2C-cve-2018-16152%29.html