2008-08-27: OpenSC Security Vulnerability updated! Please see this document for details.
Security update for OpenSC
OpenSC Security Advisory [27-Aug-2008]
OpenSC initializes CardOS cards with improper access rights
This is an update to our security advisory 31-Jul-2008.
Chaskiel M Grundman found a security vulnerability in OpenSC. The vulnerability has been fixed in OpenSC 0.11.6. 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).
OpenSC 0.11.5 released July 30th 2008 was found to contain only a partial fix. The new tool for testing and updating smart cards ("pkcs15-tool -T") contained a too strict check - including the Card label to match "OpenSC". Jean-Pierre Szikora found this problem: a card can be initialized with setting any label (use "pkcs15-init --create-pkcs15 --label foobar" for example), thus this check was too strict and had to be removed.
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-toolhas 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 -Twill either show
fci is up-to-date, card is fineor
fci is out-of-date, card is vulnerable
If the card is vulnerable, please update the security setting using:
pkcs15-tool -T -Uthis will show:
fci is out-of-date, card is vulnerable security update applied with success.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 earlier are vulnerable and version 0.2.3 included the partial fix with OpenSC 0.11.5 only. A new version 0.2.4 including OpenSC 0.11.6 will be soon available.
Our old 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 are now available in the "Build" project. Version 001 includes OpenSC 0.11.5 with the partial fix, a new version 002 with OpenSC 0.11.6 will be soon available.