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GnutlsApplication · Gnu

CVE-2008-1949

HIGH · 9.3 CVSS v2.0 Published 2008-05-21
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Public exploit Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
The _gnutls_recv_client_kx_message function in lib/gnutls_kx.c in libgnutls in gnutls-serv in GnuTLS before 2.2.4 continues to process Client Hello messages within a TLS message after one has already been processed, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL dereference and crash) via a TLS message containing multiple Client Hello messages, aka GNUTLS-SA-2008-1-2.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-287

The mechanism that verifies who a user is can be side-stepped or fooled, letting an attacker act as someone they're not. Everything built on top of that identity then becomes untrustworthy. Fixing it means hardening the full authentication flow, including edge cases, tokens, and secondary paths.

General guidance for the improper authentication class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
GnutlsApplication
Affected:= 1.0.18= 1.0.19= 1.0.20= 1.0.21= 1.0.22= 1.0.23= 1.0.24= 1.0.25= 1.1.13= 1.1.14= 1.1.15= 1.1.16

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
M
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
Complete
Integrity
Complete
Availability
Complete

AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch www.securityfocus.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

GnuTLS 2.2.4 or later (ideally latest 2.x or 3.x stable release for ongoing security support)

  1. 1. Identify the current GnuTLS version installed on the system using: dpkg -l | grep libgnutls (Debian/Ubuntu) or rpm -qa | grep gnutls (RHEL/CentOS)
  2. 2. Check if the installed version is 1.0.18, 1.0.19, 1.0.20, or 1.0.21
  3. 3. Remove the vulnerable GnuTLS 1.0.x packages: apt-get remove libgnutls-dev libgnutls26 (Debian/Ubuntu) or yum remove gnutls-devel gnutls (RHEL/CentOS)
  4. 4. Install the patched version 2.2.4 or later from the distribution's security repository: apt-get install libgnutls26 (or the equivalent package for your distribution)
  5. 5. Restart any services that use GnuTLS (such as gnutls-serv, TLS-enabled web servers, or FTP servers) to ensure the patched library is loaded
  6. 6. Verify the fix by checking the installed version: gnutls-serv --version or openssl s_client -connect <server> to confirm TLS functionality
Caveat Major version upgrade from 1.0.x to 2.x may have API/ABI changes - verify application compatibility and recompile dependent software against the new library

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2008-1949 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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What this is

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  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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