CVE-2016-9938: Medium severity asterisk vulnerability
An issue was discovered in Asterisk Open Source 11.x before 11.25.1, 13.x before 13.13.1, and 14.x before 14.2.1 and Certified Asterisk 11.x before 11.6-cert16 and 13.x before 13.8-cert4. The chansip channel driver has a liberal definition for whitespace when attempting to strip the content between a SIP header name and a colon character. Rather than following RFC 3261 and stripping only spaces and horizontal tabs, Asterisk treats any non-printable ASCII character as if it were whitespace. This means that headers such as Contact\x01: will be seen as a valid Contact header. This mostly does not pose a problem until Asterisk is placed in tandem with an authenticating SIP proxy. In such a case, a crafty combination of valid and invalid To headers can cause a proxy to allow an INVITE request into Asterisk without authentication since it believes the request is an in-dialog request. However, because of the bug described above, the request will look like an out-of-dialog request to Asterisk. Asterisk will then process the request as a new call. The result is that Asterisk can process calls from unvetted sources without any authentication. If you do not use a proxy for authentication, then this issue does not affect you. If your proxy is dialog-aware (meaning that the proxy keeps track of what dialogs are currently valid), then this issue does not affect you. If you use chanpjsip instead of chansip, then this issue does not affect you.
Affected Software
Event History
Frequently Asked Questions
What versions of Asterisk are affected by CVE-2016-9938?
CVE-2016-9938 affects Asterisk versions 11.x prior to 11.25.1, 13.x prior to 13.13.1, and 14.x prior to 14.2.1.
What is the nature of the security issue described in CVE-2016-9938?
CVE-2016-9938 is related to a vulnerability in the chan_sip channel driver that improperly handles whitespace, potentially allowing for unexpected behavior.
How serious is the CVE-2016-9938 vulnerability?
CVE-2016-9938 has a moderate severity rating and may impact the security of affected Asterisk installations.
What steps should I take to mitigate CVE-2016-9938?
To mitigate CVE-2016-9938, it is recommended to upgrade Asterisk to the latest patched versions, such as 11.25.1, 13.13.1, or 14.2.1.
Is there a specific patch available for CVE-2016-9938?
Yes, patches for CVE-2016-9938 are included in the respective version updates for Asterisk, and upgrading is advised to apply the fix.