The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2017-17174, is related to the implementation of an insecure encryption algorithm and could be exploited to power MiTM attack to decrypt a session key and recover the content of the entire session.

“There is a weak algorithm vulnerability in some Huawei products. A remote, unauthenticated attacker may capture traffic between clients and the affected products.” reads the security advisory published by Huawei.

“Due to the use of insecure encryption algorithm, the attacker may decrypt the session key by some cryptanalytic operations and the traffic between the server and the client. Successful exploit may cause information leak.”

The following Huawei products using RSA encryption in TLS are potentially vulnerable:

• The RSE6500 Recording and Streaming Engine version V500R002C00. A high-performance, full-HD recording and streaming engine that supports live video multicast and mobile Video on Demand (VoD).
• The SoftCo unified communications software version V200R003C20SPCb00;
• The VP9660 video conferencing multipoint control units version V600R006C10;
• Multiple versions of its eSpace U1981 IP telephony and enterprise communications universal SIP gateway.

Huawei rated the vulnerability as a 5.3 (medium) because it is not easy to exploit, the company has released software updates to address the flaw for all of its solution except for the unified communications software SoftCo that has been deprecated.

Every flaw discovered in products of Chinese and Russia firm trigger the alarm of governments that are already banning their solution from critical infrastructure and government offices.

In May, the Pentagon ordered retail outlets on US military bases to stop selling Huawei and ZTE products due to unacceptable security risk they pose.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – CVE-2017-17174,  encryption)

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