Message spoofing via noncanonical serialization
Published May 24, 2023 · Updated Jan 16, 2025
Improper integrity validation in Briar before 1.4.22 allows remote authenticated users to spoof other users' messages via crafted duplicates. Briar verifies signed blog, forum, and private-group messages by deserializing and reserializing their bodies without requiring canonical serialization, allowing different wire representations to produce the same signed content and identifiers. A malicious participant must be able to send messages to the relevant group or contact, and the result is message confusion and integrity loss rather than content alteration or service interruption.
Summary
What happened
Improper integrity validation in Briar before 1.4.22 allows remote authenticated users to spoof other users' messages via crafted duplicates. Briar verifies signed blog, forum, and private-group messages by deserializing and reserializing their bodies without requiring canonical serialization, allowing different wire representations to produce the same signed content and identifiers. A malicious participant must be able to send messages to the relevant group or contact, and the result is message confusion and integrity loss rather than content alteration or service interruption.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-33981
- Published
- May 24, 2023
- Updated
- Jan 16, 2025
- Vendor
- Unknown vendor
- Product
- Unknown product
- Classifications
- CWE-354, T1565.002
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- May 24, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Jan 16, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Affected products and versions are unavailable in this record.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
- ETH Zürich technical report on Briar message duplicationproof of concept · unverified
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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