OpenSC Security Advisory

[Andreas Jellinghaus <aj () dungeon inka de>]

OpenSC Security Advisory [31-Jul-2008]

OpenSC initializes CardOS cards with improper access rights
-----------------------------------------------------------

Chaskiel M Grundman found a security vulnerability in OpenSC.
The vulnerability has been fixed in OpenSC 0.11.5.
In Mitre's CVE dictionary this issue is filed under CVE-2008-2235.
Users will need to run "pkcs15-tool -T -U" to test (-T) and 
update (-U) the security settings on their card.

All versions of OpenSC prior to 0.11.5 initialized smart cards
with Siemens CardOS M4 card operating system without proper
access right: the ADMIN file control information in the 5015
directory on the smart card was left to 00 (all access allowed).

With this bug anyone can change a user PIN without having the PIN
or PUK or the superusers PIN or PUK. However it can not be used
to figure out the PIN. Thus if the PIN on your card is still the
same you always had, then you can be sure, that noone exploited
this vulnerability.

This vulnerability affects only smart cards and usb crypto tokens
based on Siemens CardOS M4, and within that group only those that
were initialized with OpenSC.

Users of other smart cards and usb crypto tokens are not affected.
Users of Siemens CardOS M4 based smart cards and crypto tokens are
not affected, if the card was initialized with some software other
than OpenSC.

The new version of OpenSC implements a simple way to verify if a
card is affected or not:
        pkcs15-tool has now two new options:
  --test-update, -T             Test if the card needs a security update
  --update, -U                  Update the card with a security update

Running
        pkcs15-tool -T
will either show
        fci is up-to-date, card is fine
or 
        fci is out-off-date, card is vulnerable

If the card is vulnerable, please update the security setting using:
        pkcs15-tool -T -U
this will show:
        fci is out-off-date, card is vulnerable
        security update applied with success.


Our Mac OS X Installer Package "SCA" is also affected by this vulnerability:
Version 0.2.2 and earleir are vulnerable. A new version 0.2.3 including this
fix will soon be available at
                http://www.opensc-project.org/

Our Windows Installer Package "SCB" is also affected by this vulnerability:
All versions are affected. We don't have any windows developer left, so right
now noone can update this package. But new windows binaries build using mingw
will be soon available at
                http://www.opensc-project.org/files/build/

--cut--

attached is a patch distributions can apply instead of updating to the new 
version. still users will need to run "pkcs15-tool -T -U" for all their smart 
cards and usb crypto tokens (only those based on "Siemens CardOS M4" and 
initialized with OpenSC), please let them know.

Regards, Andreas

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