CVE-2012-0955: software-properties incorrectly validated TLS certificates

Severity: high (CVSS 7.4 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2020-12-02 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-295

Description

software-properties was vulnerable to a person-in-the-middle attack due to incorrect TLS certificate validation in softwareproperties/ppa.py. software-properties didn't check TLS certificates under python2 and only checked certificates under python3 if a valid certificate bundle was provided. Fixed in software-properties version 0.92.

Affected products

Canonical software-properties: before 0.92 — fixed in 0.92

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Canonical software-properties 0.92. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://code.launchpad.net/~cyphermox/software-properties/lp1036839/+merge/119753
https://launchpad.net/bugs/1036839
https://code.launchpad.net/~cyphermox/software-properties/lp1036839/+merge/119753
https://launchpad.net/bugs/1036839

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