Integer signedness error in the ssh2rdpkt function in PuTTY before 0.56 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a SSH2MSGDEBUG packet with a modified stringlen parameter, which leads to a buffer overflow.

Multiple SSH2 servers and clients do not properly handle packets or data elements with incorrect length specifiers, which may allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code, as demonstrated by the SSHredder SSH protocol test suite.

Multiple SSH2 servers and clients do not properly handle large packets or large fields, which may allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code via buffer overflow attacks, as demonstrated by the SSHredder SSH protocol test suite.

Multiple SSH2 servers and clients do not properly handle strings with null characters in them when the string length is specified by a length field, which could allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code due to interactions with the use of null-terminated strings as implemented using languages such as C, as demonstrated by the SSHredder SSH protocol test suite.

Multiple SSH2 servers and clients do not properly handle lists with empty elements or strings, which may allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code, as demonstrated by the SSHredder SSH protocol test suite.

In PuTTY versions before 0.71 on Unix, a remotely triggerable buffer overflow exists in any kind of server-to-client forwarding.

Potential recycling of random numbers used in cryptography exists within PuTTY before 0.71.

The sshagentchanneldata function in PuTTY before 0.68 allows remote attackers to have unspecified impact via a large length value in an agent protocol message and leveraging the ability to connect to the Unix-domain socket representing the forwarded agent connection, which trigger a buffer overflow.

PuTTY before 0.73 on Windows improperly opens port-forwarding listening sockets, which allows attackers to listen on the same port to steal an incoming connection.

PuTTY through 0.75 proceeds with establishing an SSH session even if it has never sent a substantive authentication response. This makes it easier for an attacker-controlled SSH server to present a later spoofed authentication prompt (that the attacker can use to capture credential data, and use that data for purposes that are undesired by the client user).

Multiple untrusted search path vulnerabilities in Putty beta 0.67 allow local users to execute arbitrary code and conduct DLL hijacking attacks via a Trojan horse (1) UxTheme.dll or (2) ntmarta.dll file in the current working directory.

In PuTTY versions before 0.71 on Windows, local attackers could hijack the application by putting a malicious help file in the same directory as the executable.

The PuTTY terminal emulator 0.53 allows attackers to modify the window title via a certain character escape sequence and then insert it back to the command line in the user's terminal, e.g. when the user views a file containing the malicious sequence, which could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary commands.

Multiple integer overflows in the (1) sftppktgetstring and (2) fxpreaddirrecv functions in the PSFTP and PSCP clients for PuTTY 0.56, and possibly earlier versions, allow remote malicious web sites to execute arbitrary code via SFTP responses that corrupt the heap after insufficient memory has been allocated.

Multiple heap-based buffer overflows in the modpow function in PuTTY before 0.55 allow (1) remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via an SSH2 packet with a base argument that is larger than the mod argument, which causes the modpow function to write memory before the beginning of its buffer, and (2) remote malicious servers to cause a denial of service (client crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via a large bignum during authentication.

Multiple denial-of-service attacks that can be triggered by writing to the terminal exist in PuTTY versions before 0.71.

A remotely triggerable memory overwrite in RSA key exchange in PuTTY before 0.71 can occur before host key verification.

PuTTY before 0.75 on Windows allows remote servers to cause a denial of service (Windows GUI hang) by telling the PuTTY window to change its title repeatedly at high speed, which results in many SetWindowTextA or SetWindowTextW calls. NOTE: the same attack methodology may affect some OS-level GUIs on Linux or other platforms for similar reasons.

PuTTY before 0.73 mishandles the "bracketed paste mode" protection mechanism, which may allow a session to be affected by malicious clipboard content.

PuTTY before 0.73 might allow remote SSH-1 servers to cause a denial of service by accessing freed memory locations via an SSH1MSGDISCONNECT message.

Heap-based buffer underflow in the modmul function in sshbn.c in PuTTY before 0.63 allows remote SSH servers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly trigger memory corruption or code execution via a crafted DSA signature, which is not properly handled when performing certain bit-shifting operations during modular multiplication.

Integer overflow in PuTTY 0.62 and earlier, WinSCP before 5.1.6, and other products that use PuTTY allows remote SSH servers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code in certain applications that use PuTTY via a negative size value in an RSA key signature during the SSH handshake, which triggers a heap-based buffer overflow.

Summary

Terrapin is a prefix truncation attack targeting the SSH protocol. More precisely, Terrapin breaks the integrity of SSH's secure channel. By carefully adjusting the sequence numbers during the handshake, an attacker can remove an arbitrary amount of messages sent by the client or server at the beginning of the secure channel without the client or server noticing it.

Mitigations

To mitigate this protocol vulnerability, OpenSSH suggested a so-called "strict kex" which alters the SSH handshake to ensure a Man-in-the-Middle attacker cannot introduce unauthenticated messages as well as convey sequence number manipulation across handshakes.

Warning: To take effect, both the client and server must support this countermeasure.

As a stop-gap measure, peers may also (temporarily) disable the affected algorithms and use unaffected alternatives like AES-GCM instead until patches are available.

Details

The SSH specifications of ChaCha20-Poly1305 (chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com) and Encrypt-then-MAC (-etm@openssh.com MACs) are vulnerable against an arbitrary prefix truncation attack (a.k.a. Terrapin attack). This allows for an extension negotiation downgrade by stripping the SSHMSGEXTINFO sent after the first message after SSHMSGNEWKEYS, downgrading security, and disabling attack countermeasures in some versions of OpenSSH. When targeting Encrypt-then-MAC, this attack requires the use of a CBC cipher to be practically exploitable due to the internal workings of the cipher mode. Additionally, this novel attack technique can be used to exploit previously unexploitable implementation flaws in a Man-in-the-Middle scenario.

The attack works by an attacker injecting an arbitrary number of SSHMSGIGNORE messages during the initial key exchange and consequently removing the same number of messages just after the initial key exchange has concluded. This is possible due to missing authentication of the excess SSHMSGIGNORE messages and the fact that the implicit sequence numbers used within the SSH protocol are only checked after the initial key exchange.

In the case of ChaCha20-Poly1305, the attack is guaranteed to work on every connection as this cipher does not maintain an internal state other than the message's sequence number. In the case of Encrypt-Then-MAC, practical exploitation requires the use of a CBC cipher; while theoretical integrity is broken for all ciphers when using this mode, message processing will fail at the application layer for CTR and stream ciphers.

For more details see https://terrapin-attack.com.

Impact

This attack targets the specification of ChaCha20-Poly1305 (chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com) and Encrypt-then-MAC (-etm@openssh.com), which are widely adopted by well-known SSH implementations and can be considered de-facto standard. These algorithms can be practically exploited; however, in the case of Encrypt-Then-MAC, we additionally require the use of a CBC cipher. As a consequence, this attack works against all well-behaving SSH implementations supporting either of those algorithms and can be used to downgrade (but not fully strip) connection security in case SSH extension negotiation (RFC8308) is supported. The attack may also enable attackers to exploit certain implementation flaws in a man-in-the-middle (MitM) scenario.

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. One 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. Because SSH is sometimes used to authenticate to Git services, it is possible that this vulnerability could be leveraged for supply-chain attacks on software maintained in Git. It is also conceivable that signed messages from PuTTY or Pageant are readable by adversaries more easily in other scenarios, but none have yet been disclosed.

Affected Products

- PuTTY 0.68 - 0.80

The following (not necessarily complete) list of products bundle an affected PuTTY version and are therefore vulnerable as well:

- FileZilla 3.24.1 - 3.66.5 - WinSCP 5.9.5 - 6.3.2 - TortoiseGit 2.4.0.2 - 2.15.0 - TortoiseSVN 1.10.0 - 1.14.6

Impact

The nonce bias allows for full secret key recovery of NIST P-521 keys after a malicious actor has seen roughly 60 valid ECDSA signatures generated by any PuTTY component under the same key. Luckily, client signatures are transmitted within the secure channel of SSH, requiring a malicious server to acquire such signatures. If the key has been used to sign arbitrary data (e.g., git commits by forwarding Pageant to a development host), the publicly available signatures (e.g., on GitHub) can be used as well.

All NIST P-521 client keys used with PuTTY must be considered compromised, given that the attack can be carried out even after the root cause has been fixed in the source code (assuming that ~60 pre-patch signatures are available to an adversary).

Mitigations

This vulnerability has been fixed in PuTTY 0.81, FileZilla 3.67.0, WinSCP 6.3.3, and TortoiseGit 2.15.0.1. Users of TortoiseSVN are advised to configure TortoiseSVN to use Plink from the latest PuTTY 0.81 release when accessing a SVN repository via SSH until a patch becomes available.

ECDSA NIST-P521 keys used with any vulnerable product / component should be considered compromised and consequently revoked by removing them from authorizedkeys, GitHub, ...

References: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/changes.html https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/vuln-p521-bias.html

PuTTY 0.72 before 0.84 has a double free in RSA KEX.

PuTTY 0.68 through 0.73 has an Observable Discrepancy leading to an information leak in the algorithm negotiation. This allows man-in-the-middle attackers to target initial connection attempts (where no host key for the server has been cached by the client).

xterm, Eterm, and rxvt allow an attacker to cause a denial of service by embedding certain escape characters which force the window to be resized.

PuTTY 0.53b and earlier does not clear logon credentials from memory, including plaintext passwords, which could allow attackers with access to memory to steal the SSH credentials.

Buffer overflow in sshbn.c in PuTTY before 0.63 allows remote SSH servers to cause a denial of service (crash) via an invalid DSA signature that is not properly handled during computation of a modular inverse and triggers the overflow during a division by zero by the bignum functionality, a different vulnerability than CVE-2013-4206.

PuTTY 0.71 before 0.84 has an assertion failure in ECDSA signature verification.