CVE-2015-8542
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 · uneditedAn issue was discovered in Open-Xchange Guard before 2.2.0-rev8. The "getprivkeybyid" API call is used to download a PGP Private Key for a specific user after providing authentication credentials. Clients provide the "id" and "cid" parameter to specify the current user by its user- and context-ID. The "auth" parameter contains a hashed password string which gets created by the client by asking the user to enter his or her OX Guard password. This parameter is used as single point of authentication when accessing PGP Private Keys. In case a user has set the same password as another user, it is possible to download another user's PGP Private Key by iterating the "id" and "cid" parameters. This kind of attack would also be able by brute-forcing login credentials, but since the "id" and "cid" parameters are sequential they are much easier to predict than a user's login name. At the same time, there are some obvious insecure standard passwords that are widely used. A attacker could send the hashed representation of typically weak passwords and randomly fetch Private Key of matching accounts. The attack can be executed by both internal users and "guests" which use the external mail reader.
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 analysisA detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.
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<= 2.2.0CVSS 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
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
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.
From vendor dataScan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2015-8542 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2015-8542 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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