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.

Impact

In SFTPGo versions prior to 2.7.1, a path normalization discrepancy between the protocol handlers and the internal Virtual Filesystem routing can lead to an authorization bypass. An authenticated attacker can craft specific file paths to bypass folder-level permissions or escape the boundaries of a configured Virtual Folder.

Patches

This issue has been addressed in SFTPGo version 2.7.1. The fix introduces strict edge-level path normalization, ensuring that all protocol inputs are fully sanitized and resolved to canonical POSIX paths before any routing or permission evaluations occur.

Impact

SFTPGo versions before v2.7.1 contain an input validation issue in the handling of dynamic group paths, for example, home directories or key prefixes.

When a group is configured with a dynamic home directory or key prefix using placeholders like %username%, the value replacing the placeholder is not strictly sanitized against relative path components. Consequently, if a user is created with a specially crafted username the resulting path may resolve to a parent directory instead of the intended sub-directory.

Patches

This issue is fixed in version v2.7.1

SFTPGo is an SFTP server written in Go. Versions prior to 2.3.5 are subject to Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the SFTPGo WebClient, allowing remote attackers to inject malicious code. This issue is patched in version 2.3.5. No known workarounds exist.

SFTPGo is configurable SFTP server with optional HTTP/S, FTP/S and WebDAV support. SFTPGo WebAdmin and WebClient support login using TOTP (Time-based One Time Passwords) as a secondary authentication factor. Because TOTPs are often configured on mobile devices that can be lost, stolen or damaged, SFTPGo also supports recovery codes. These are a set of one time use codes that can be used instead of the TOTP. In SFTPGo versions from version 2.2.0 to 2.3.3 recovery codes can be generated before enabling two-factor authentication. An attacker who knows the user's password could potentially generate some recovery codes and then bypass two-factor authentication after it is enabled on the account at a later time. This issue has been fixed in version 2.3.4. Recovery codes can now only be generated after enabling two-factor authentication and are deleted after disabling it.

In SFTPGO 2.6.2, the JWT implementation lacks certain security measures, such as using JWT ID (JTI) claims, nonces, and proper expiration and invalidation mechanisms. NOTE: The vendor argues that the prerequisite for this exploit is to be able to steal another user's cookie. Additionally, it is argued that SFTPGo validates cookies being used by the IP address it was issued to, so stolen cookies from different IP addresses will not work.