1. Ubuntu Security Notices
  2. USN-3944-1

USN-3944-1: wpa_supplicant and hostapd vulnerabilities

Publication date

10 April 2019

Overview

Several security issues were fixed in wpa_supplicant and hostapd.

Releases

Packages

  • wpa - client support for WPA and WPA2

Details

It was discovered that wpa_supplicant and hostapd were vulnerable to a
side channel attack against EAP-pwd. A remote attacker could possibly use
this issue to recover certain passwords. (CVE-2019-9495)

Mathy Vanhoef discovered that wpa_supplicant and hostapd incorrectly
validated received scalar and element values in EAP-pwd-Commit messages. A
remote attacker could possibly use this issue to perform a reflection
attack and authenticate without the appropriate password. (CVE-2019-9497,
CVE-2019-9498, CVE-2019-9499)

It was discovered that hostapd incorrectly handled obtaining random
numbers. In rare cases where the urandom device isn’t available, it would
fall back to using a low-quality PRNG. This issue only affected Ubuntu
14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (

It was discovered that wpa_supplicant and hostapd were vulnerable to a
side channel attack against EAP-pwd. A remote attacker could possibly use
this issue to recover certain passwords. (CVE-2019-9495)

Mathy Vanhoef discovered that wpa_supplicant and hostapd incorrectly
validated received scalar and element values in EAP-pwd-Commit messages. A
remote attacker could possibly use this issue to perform a reflection
attack and authenticate without the appropriate password. (CVE-2019-9497,
CVE-2019-9498, CVE-2019-9499)

It was discovered that hostapd incorrectly handled obtaining random
numbers. In rare cases where the urandom device isn’t available, it would
fall back to using a low-quality PRNG. This issue only affected Ubuntu
14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (CVE-2016-10743)

Update instructions

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make all the necessary changes.

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu Release Package Version
18.10 cosmic hostapd –  2:2.6-18ubuntu1.1
wpasupplicant –  2:2.6-18ubuntu1.1
18.04 bionic hostapd –  2:2.6-15ubuntu2.2
wpasupplicant –  2:2.6-15ubuntu2.2
16.04 xenial hostapd –  1:2.4-0ubuntu6.4
wpasupplicant –  2.4-0ubuntu6.4
14.04 trusty hostapd –  1:2.1-0ubuntu1.7
wpasupplicant –  2.1-0ubuntu1.7

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References

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