PuTTY < 0.81 Key Recovery Attack Vulnerability

high Nessus Plugin ID 193433

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Synopsis

The remote Windows host has an SSH client that is affected by an key recovery attack vulnerability.

Description

In PuTTY 0.68 through 0.80 before 0.81, biased ECDSA nonce generation allows an attacker to recover a user's NIST P-521 secret key via a quick attack in approximately 60 signatures. This is especially important in a scenario where an adversary is able to read messages signed by PuTTY or Pageant. The required set of signed messages may be publicly readable because they are stored in a public Git service that supports use of SSH for commit signing, and the signatures were made by Pageant through an agent-forwarding mechanism. In other words, an adversary may already have enough signature information to compromise a victim's private key, even if there is no further use of vulnerable PuTTY versions. After a key compromise, an adversary may be able to conduct supply-chain attacks on software maintained in Git. A second, independent scenario is that the adversary is an operator of an SSH server to which the victim authenticates (for remote login or file copy), even though this server is not fully trusted by the victim, and the victim uses the same private key for SSH connections to other services operated by other entities. Here, the rogue server operator (who would otherwise have no way to determine the victim's private key) can derive the victim's private key, and then use it for unauthorized access to those other services. If the other services include Git services, then again it may be possible to conduct supply-chain attacks on software maintained in Git.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Upgrade to PuTTY version 0.81 or later.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 193433

File Name: putty_081.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: windows

Family: Windows

Published: 4/17/2024

Updated: 4/19/2024

Supported Sensors: Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

CVSS Score Rationale: Score from an in depth analysis done by tenable

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.9

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.8

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

CVSS Score Source: manual

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.1

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/a:simon_tatham:putty

Required KB Items: installed_sw/PuTTY, SMB/Registry/Enumerated

Patch Publication Date: 4/15/2024

Vulnerability Publication Date: 4/15/2024

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2024-31497

IAVA: 2024-A-0243

Detections

Analytics