From a021a1d2aeba8ce3391f56a070f01db00468da27 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tom Lane
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2021 11:14:56 -0500
Subject: 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
---
doc/src/sgml/protocol.sgml | 14 ++++++++++++++
src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c | 13 +++++++++++++
2 files changed, 27 insertions(+)
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
@@ -1467,6 +1467,20 @@ SELCT 1/0;
and proceed without requesting SSL.
+
+ When SSL encryption can be performed, the server
+ is expected to send only the single S byte and then
+ wait for the frontend to initiate an SSL 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
+ (CVE-2021-23222).
+ 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.
+
+
An initial SSLRequest can also be used in a connection that is being
opened to send a CancelRequest message.
diff --git a/src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c b/src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c
index 457d5c12447..19318ad4870 100644
--- a/src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c
+++ b/src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c
@@ -2720,6 +2720,19 @@ keep_going: /* We will come back to here until there is
pollres = pqsecure_open_client(conn);
if (pollres == PGRES_POLLING_OK)
{
+ /*
+ * At this point we should have no data already buffered.
+ * If we do, it was received before we performed the SSL
+ * handshake, so it wasn't encrypted and indeed may have
+ * been injected by a man-in-the-middle.
+ */
+ if (conn->inCursor != conn->inEnd)
+ {
+ appendPQExpBufferStr(&conn->errorMessage,
+ libpq_gettext("received unencrypted data after SSL response\n"));
+ goto error_return;
+ }
+
/* SSL handshake done, ready to send startup packet */
conn->status = CONNECTION_MADE;
return PGRES_POLLING_WRITING;
--
cgit v1.2.3