What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2019-16905
- Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 2.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2019-10-09 · updated 2026-10-14
- Weakness: CWE-190
Description
OpenSSH 7.7 through 7.9 and 8.x before 8.1, when compiled with an experimental key type, has a pre-authentication integer overflow if a client or server is configured to use a crafted XMSS key. This leads to memory corruption and local code execution because of an error in the XMSS key parsing algorithm. NOTE: the XMSS implementation is considered experimental in all released OpenSSH versions, and there is no supported way to enable it when building portable OpenSSH.
Affected products
- NetApp Cloud Backup: all versions
- NetApp Steelstore Cloud Integrated Storage: all versions
- OpenSSH: from 7.7 through 7.9; from 8.0 before 8.1 — fixed in 8.1
- Siemens Scalance X204Rna Ecc Firmware: before 3.2.7 — fixed in 3.2.7
- Siemens Scalance X204Rna Firmware: before 3.2.7 — fixed in 3.2.7
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: OpenSSH 8.1; Siemens Scalance X204Rna Ecc Firmware 3.2.7; Siemens Scalance X204Rna Firmware 3.2.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1153537
- https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-412672.pdf
- https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ssh/sshkey-xmss.c
- https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ssh/sshkey-xmss.c.diff?r1=1.5&r2=1.6&f=h
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201911-01
- https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20191024-0003/
- https://ssd-disclosure.com/archives/4033/ssd-advisory-openssh-pre-auth-xmss-integer-overflow
- https://www.openssh.com/releasenotes.html
- https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/10/09/1
- https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1153537
- https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-412672.pdf
- https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ssh/sshkey-xmss.c
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