FreeBSD VuXML: Documenting security issues in FreeBSD and the FreeBSD Ports Collection

FreeBSD -- SAE side-channel attacks

Affected packages
12.0 <= FreeBSD < 12.0_3
11.2 <= FreeBSD < 11.2_9
wpa_supplicant < 2.8
hostapd < 2.8

Details

VuXML ID 7e53f9cc-656d-11e9-8e67-206a8a720317
Discovery 2019-04-10
Entry 2019-04-23

Problem Description:

Side channel attacks in the SAE implementations used by both hostapd (AP) and wpa_supplicant (infrastructure BSS station/mesh station). SAE (Simultaneous Authentication of Equals) is also known as WPA3-Personal. The discovered side channel attacks may be able to leak information about the used password based on observable timing differences and cache access patterns. This might result in full password recovery when combined with an offline dictionary attack and if the password is not strong enough to protect against dictionary attacks.

See https://w1.fi/security/2019-1/sae-side-channel-attacks.txt for a detailed description of the bug.

Impact:

All wpa_supplicant and hostapd versions with SAE support (CONFIG_SAE=y in the build configuration and SAE being enabled in the runtime configuration).

References

CVE Name CVE-2019-9494