CVE-2023-25187
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 on NOKIA Airscale ASIKA Single RAN devices before 21B. Nokia Single RAN commissioning procedures do not change (factory-time installed) default SSH public/private key values that are specific to a network operator. As a result, the CSP internal BTS network SSH server (disabled by default) continues to apply the default SSH public/private key values. These keys don't give access to BTS, because service user authentication is username/password-based on top of SSH. Nokia factory installed default SSH keys are meant to be changed from operator-specific values during the BTS deployment commissioning phase. However, before the 21B release, BTS commissioning manuals did not provide instructions to change default SSH keys (to BTS operator-specific values). This leads to a possibility for malicious operations staff (inside a CSP network) to attempt MITM exploitation of BTS service user access, during the moments that SSH is enabled for Nokia service personnel to perform troubleshooting activities.
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 password or key is baked into the source or binary, so anyone who obtains the code obtains the credential. These are trivially found once the software is distributed. Remediation means removing the secret, rotating it, and loading credentials from secured configuration at runtime.
General guidance for the hard-coded credentials 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= 19b= 20a= 20b= 20c= 21aCVSS 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
- Local
- Complexity
- High
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/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.
dbcve · scoped21B
- 1. Identify all affected Nokia Airscale ASIKA devices running firmware versions 19b, 20a, 20b, or 20c
- 2. Schedule a maintenance window for the firmware upgrade
- 3. Backup current device configuration according to Nokia backup procedures
- 4. Obtain the Nokia Airscale ASIKA firmware version 21B from official Nokia distribution channels
- 5. Follow Nokia's documented firmware upgrade procedure to upgrade each affected device to version 21B
- 6. After upgrade, during commissioning, ensure that default SSH public/private key values are changed to operator-specific values as documented in the 21B commissioning manual
- 7. Verify the upgrade was successful and the new firmware is running
- 8. Confirm that SSH key rotation was completed as part of commissioning
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
There is no version to upgrade to and no patch to apply. Every affected install stays exposed until the vendor ships a fix — or somebody else builds one.
Free. We build fixes in the order the community asks for them — and we’ll tell you the moment this one lands.
We develop and verify an original fix where the vendor hasn’t, from $3,200. Deployed to your staging first — never straight to production.
Scope it with usSee what else the community needs solved on the solutions-needed board.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2023-25187 — 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-2023-25187 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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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data