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Go package github.com/notaryproject/notation configured with permissive trust policies potentially susceptible to rollback attack from compromised registry

Moderate severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jan 19, 2024 in notaryproject/specifications • Updated Jan 22, 2024

Package

gomod github.com/notaryproject/notation (Go)

Affected versions

<= 1.0.0

Patched versions

None

Description

Impact

An external actor with control of a compromised container registry can provide outdated versions of OCI artifacts, such as Images. This could lead artifact consumers with relaxed trust policies (such as permissive instead of strict) to potentially use artifacts with signatures that are no longer valid, making them susceptible to any exploits those artifacts may contain.

Mitigation

In Notary Project, an artifact publisher can control the validity period of artifact by specifying signature expiry during the signing process. Using shorter signature validity periods along with processes to periodically resign artifacts, allows artifact producers to ensure that their consumers will only receive up-to-date artifacts. Artifact consumers should correspondingly use a strict or equivalent trust policy that enforces signature expiry. Together these steps enable use of up-to-date artifacts and safeguard against rollback attack in the event of registry compromise. The Notary Project offers various signature validation options such as permissive, audit and skip to support various scenarios. These scenarios includes 1) situations demanding urgent workload deployment, necessitating the bypassing of expired or revoked signatures; 2) auditing of artifacts lacking signatures without interrupting workload; and 3) skipping of verification for specific images that might have undergone validation through alternative mechanisms.

Additionally, the Notary Project supports revocation to ensure the signature freshness. Artifact publishers can sign with short-lived certificates and revoke older certificates when necessary. This revocation serves as a signal to inform artifact consumers that the corresponding unexpired artifact is no longer approved by the publisher. This enables the artifact publisher to control the validity of the signature independently of their ability to manage artifacts in a compromised registry.

Credit

The Notary Project extends its gratitude to Justin Cappos (@JustinCappos) for responsibly disclosing the issue.

_Note: we have updated threat model to include considerations for rollback attack.

References

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jan 19, 2024
Reviewed Jan 19, 2024
Published by the National Vulnerability Database Jan 19, 2024
Last updated Jan 22, 2024

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
High
User interaction
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
Low
Availability
Low

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:L

EPSS score

0.050%
(20th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2024-23332

GHSA ID

GHSA-57wx-m636-g3g8

Credits

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