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Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information

CVE-2017-15042

Medium
5.9/10

Summary

An unintended cleartext issue exists in Go before 1.8.4 and 1.9.x before 1.9.1. RFC 4954 requires that, during SMTP, the PLAIN auth scheme must only be used on network connections secured with TLS. The original implementation of smtp.PlainAuth in Go 1.0 enforced this requirement, and it was documented to do so. In 2013, upstream issue #5184, this was changed so that the server may decide whether PLAIN is acceptable. The result is that if you set up a man-in-the-middle SMTP server that doesn't advertise STARTTLS and does advertise that PLAIN auth is OK, the smtp.PlainAuth implementation sends the username and password.

  • HIGH
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • HIGH
  • NONE

CWE-319 - Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information

The software transmits sensitive or security-critical data in cleartext in a communication channel that can be sniffed by unauthorized actors.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published