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Potential men-in-the-middle attack due to no CAA record for the uxlfoundation.org domain

Moderate
rozhukov published GHSA-gvx7-6gm7-h37m Dec 16, 2024

Package

No package listed

Affected versions

prior December, 3rd, 2024

Patched versions

after December, 3rd, 2024

Description

Impact

uxlfoundation.org website is a static landing page, features a clean, minimalist layout with basic information about the foundation, some useful links to specifications, github repositories, videos, etc. It leverages GitHub Pages as a hosting engine. UXL landing page is considered low risk by default because of:

  • No user interactions
  • Static Content with no logins or databases
  • No external integrations with 3rd parties such as APIs

The absence of a CAA (Certification Authority Authorization) record in the DNS configuration of a domain can lead to security vulnerabilities. Without a CAA record, any Certificate Authority (CA) can issue SSL/TLS certificates for the domain, potentially allowing malicious actors to obtain unauthorized certificates. This can lead to man-in-the-middle attacks, where attackers can intercept and manipulate traffic between users and the website, compromising the confidentiality and integrity of the data.

Patches

To address this issue at scale for the large web sites and services, a CAA record should be added to their DNS configuration. This record specifies which CAs are authorized to issue certificates for the domain, thereby reducing the risk of unauthorized certificate issuance.
However, due to low-risk nature of uxlfoundation.org as an alternative mitigation we've hardened the internal procedure to make sure appropriate verification and usage of the certificates. No specific actions required from users.

Credits

We would like to thank Kunal Mhaske for identifying and reporting this vulnerability. Their diligent work and responsible disclosure have been invaluable in helping to protect UXL community.

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
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

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:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

CVE ID

No known CVE

Weaknesses