Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in hexpm hex allows an attacker who can intercept HTTPS connections, and holds a certificate for a Hex host issued by a CA in Hex's bundled CA store, to impersonate that host to users who set…

Overview

Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in hexpm hex allows an attacker who can intercept HTTPS connections, and holds a certificate for a Hex host issued by a CA in Hex's bundled CA store, to impersonate that host to users who set cacerts_path to a CA store that leaves that CA out.

cacerts_path (HEX_CACERTS_PATH) is documented as the path to the CA certificate store, used instead of the CA bundle that ships with Hex. Hex.HTTP.SSL.ssl_opts/1 passes the configured store as the cacerts option, but builds the partial_chain callback from the bundled store whether cacerts_path is set or not. Hex.HTTP.SSL.partial_chain/2 accepts a server chain when any certificate in it has the same public key as a bundled CA certificate, so a chain that leads to a bundled CA passes verification although the configured store doesn't contain that CA. Hostname verification still applies.

This issue affects hex: from 0.20.2 before 2.5.2.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.