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Security Advisory - A Security Vulnerability of Using Insecure Random Numbers to Generate Self-signed Certificates in Huawei Products

  • SA No:huawei-sa-20160810-01-certificate
  • Initial Release Date: 2016-08-10
  • Last Release Date: 2016-10-28

Some Huawei products automatically generate self-signed certificates upon the first use. The random numbers used to generate these certificates are not random enough. Different devices' certificates may use the same random number consequently, which contains the risk of an attacker compromising the certificates. (Vulnerability ID: HWPSIRT-2016-05255)
This vulnerability has been assigned Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) ID: CVE-2016-6670.
Huawei has released software updates to fix this vulnerability. This advisory is available at the following link: 

http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-advisories/huawei-sa-20160810-01-certificate-en

Product Name

Affected Version

Resolved Product and Version

S2300/ S2700

V100R006C05

V100R006SPH028

V200R003C00

Upgrade to V200R005C00SPC500 and V200R005SPH012

V200R005C00

V200R005C00SPC500 and V200R005SPH012

S3300

V100R006C05

V100R006SPH028

S3700

V100R006C05

V100R006SPH028

S5300/ S5700/ S6300/ S6700

V200R003C00

Upgrade to V200R005C00SPC500 and V200R005SPH012

V200R005C00

V200R005C00SPC500 and V200R005SPH012

S7700

V200R003C00

V200R005C00

Upgrade to V200R008C00SPC500

S9300

V200R003C00

V200R005C00

Upgrade to V200R008C00SPC500

S9700

V200R003C00

V200R005C00

Upgrade to V200R008C00SPC500

S12700

V200R005C00

Upgrade to V200R008C00SPC500

An attacker may identify defective device certificates, compromise them, and obtain the private key. Not all vulnerable devices generate defective certificates. Therefore, the attacker can only compromise specific devices.
The vulnerability classification has been performed by using the CVSSv2 scoring system (http://www.first.org/cvss/).
Base Score: 4.3 (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N) 
Temporal Score: 3.6 (E:F/RL:O/RC:C)
1. Prerequisite:
An attacker needs to collect devices' certificates.
2. Attacking procedure:
Some Huawei products automatically generate self-signed certificates upon the first use. The random numbers used to generate these certificates are not random enough. Different devices' certificates may use the same random number consequently, which contains the risk of an attacker compromising the certificates.
Users do not use self-signed certificates generated by Huawei devices and can load secure certificates using the certificate load command. For specific operation methods, reference configuration files of product.

Customers should contact Huawei TAC (Huawei Technical Assistance Center) to request the upgrades. For TAC contact information, please refer to Huawei worldwide website at http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/report-vulnerabilities/index.htm

This vulnerability was reported to Huawei PSIRT by Nadia Heninger, Joshua Fried and Marcella Hastings from the University of Pennsylvania, Frank Gifford from FactorMyNumber.com also reported the problem to Huawei PSIRT later. Huawei would like to thank Nadia Heninger, Joshua Fried, Marcella Hastings and Frank Gifford for working with us and coordinated vulnerability disclosure to protect our customers.
2016-10-28 V1.2 UPDATED Updated information of "Software Versions and Fixes"
2016-08-11 V1.1 UPDATED Updated the CVE ID
2016-08-10 V1.0 INITIAL

Huawei adheres to protecting the ultimate interests of users with best efforts and the principle of responsible disclosure and deal with product security issues through our response mechanism.

To enjoy Huawei PSIRT services and obtain Huawei product vulnerability information, please visit http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt.

To report a security vulnerability in Huawei products and solutions, please send it to PSIRT@huawei.com. For details, please visit http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/report-vulnerabilities.

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