libpq: reject extraneous data after SSL or GSS encryption handshake.

libpq collects up to a bufferload of data whenever it reads data from
the socket.  When SSL or GSS encryption is requested during startup,
any additional data received with the server's yes-or-no reply
remained in the buffer, and would be treated as already-decrypted data
once the encryption handshake completed.  Thus, a man-in-the-middle
with the ability to inject data into the TCP connection could stuff
some cleartext data into the start of a supposedly encryption-protected
database session.

This could probably be abused to inject faked responses to the
client's first few queries, although other details of libpq's behavior
make that harder than it sounds.  A different line of attack is to
exfiltrate the client's password, or other sensitive data that might
be sent early in the session.  That has been shown to be possible with
a server vulnerable to CVE-2021-23214.

To fix, throw a protocol-violation error if the internal buffer
is not empty after the encryption handshake.

Our thanks to Jacob Champion for reporting this problem.

Security: CVE-2021-23222

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml
index c5ce96933be..82f472ed194 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml
@@ -1468,6 +1468,20 @@ SELCT 1/0;
    </para>
 
    <para>
+    When <acronym>SSL</acronym> encryption can be performed, the server
+    is expected to send only the single <literal>S</literal> byte and then
+    wait for the frontend to initiate an <acronym>SSL</acronym> handshake.
+    If additional bytes are available to read at this point, it likely
+    means that a man-in-the-middle is attempting to perform a
+    buffer-stuffing attack
+    (<ulink url="https://www.postgresql.org/support/security/CVE-2021-23222/">CVE-2021-23222</ulink>).
+    Frontends should be coded either to read exactly one byte from the
+    socket before turning the socket over to their SSL library, or to
+    treat it as a protocol violation if they find they have read additional
+    bytes.
+   </para>
+
+   <para>
     An initial SSLRequest can also be used in a connection that is being
     opened to send a CancelRequest message.
    </para>