ASA-2019-00390 – curl: Windows OpenSSL engine code injection


Allele Security Alert

ASA-2019-00390

Identifier(s)

ASA-2019-00390, CVE-2019-5443

Title

Windows OpenSSL engine code injection

Vendor(s)

the Curl Project

Product(s)

curl

Affected version(s)

curl for windows before version 7.65.1_2

Fixed version(s)

curl for windows version 7.65.1_2

Proof of concept

Unknown

Description

A non-privileged user or program can put code and a config file in a known non-privileged path (under C:/usr/local/) that will make curl automatically run the code (as an openssl “engine”) on invocation. If that curl is invoked by a privileged user it can do anything it wants.

This flaw exists in the official curl-for-windows binaries built and hosted by the curl project (all versions up to and including 7.65.1_1). It does not exist in the curl executable shipped by Microsoft, bundled with Windows 10. It possibly exists in other curl builds for Windows too that uses OpenSSL.

Technical details

This bug sneaked in partly due to insecure default build options in OpenSSL when built cross-compiled and partly due to a misleading commit message in the curl commit that made it possible to disable this feature.

This bug does not exist in the curl or libcurl source code but in the scripts for the Windows build.

Credits

Rich Mirch

Reference(s)

Windows OpenSSL engine code injection
https://curl.haxx.se/docs/CVE-2019-5443.html

curl: Windows OpenSSL engine code injection
https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2019/q2/196

CVE-2019-5443
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2019-5443

CVE-2019-5443
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-5443

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Last modified: June 25, 2019

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