dbcve.org
Debian LinuxOperating system · Debian

CVE-2023-52160

MEDIUM · 6.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-02-22
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 2.10 or later.
See remediation →
72/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Remotely reachable No privileges 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 implementation of PEAP in wpa_supplicant through 2.10 allows authentication bypass. For a successful attack, wpa_supplicant must be configured to not verify the network's TLS certificate during Phase 1 authentication, and an eap_peap_decrypt vulnerability can then be abused to skip Phase 2 authentication. The attack vector is sending an EAP-TLV Success packet instead of starting Phase 2. This allows an adversary to impersonate Enterprise Wi-Fi networks.

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
Debian LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 10.0
FedoraOperating system
Affected:= 38= 39
Enterprise LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 8.0= 9.0
Wpa SupplicantApplication
Affected:<= 2.10

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
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
Required
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

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
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 2.10
Vendor patch w1.fi →
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

wpa_supplicant version > 2.10 (e.g., 2.11 or later, or the version containing commit 8e6485a1)

  1. 1. Identify the wpa_supplicant version currently installed (e.g., wpa_supplicant --version)
  2. 2. Upgrade wpa_supplicant to a version newer than 2.10 that includes the security fix from commit 8e6485a1bcb0baffdea9e55255a81270b768439c
  3. 3. For Debian 10, upgrade the entire distribution or obtain a backported fixed package
  4. 4. For RHEL/Enterprise Linux 8.0/9.0, run: dnf update wpa_supplicant
  5. 5. For Fedora 38/39, run: dnf update wpa_supplicant
  6. 6. After updating, verify the new version is running: wpa_supplicant --version
  7. 7. If using PEAP authentication, ensure certificate verification is ENABLED in the configuration (set ca_cert or phase2 parameter appropriately)
Caveat Minor: Configuration changes may be needed if explicitly relying on disabled certificate verification; however, disabling cert verification was a pre-requisite for exploitation so this is not a recommended configuration

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

We can identify the exact fixed release, upgrade, and verify it in staging — typical engagement from $1,600. Get the upgrade done

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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-2023-52160 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • 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
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